Lady Of My Night
by Teeny Tiny Twilight
Summary: Chime Bella , a prostitute already down on her luck encounters vampire, Edward Cullen. Edward wants to help her, while Bella wants him to move past his what she thinks is his crutch: Her. They soon realize that no good deed goes unpunished. E.POV
1. prologue

**Prologue**

**Teeny Tiny Twilight**

What is it, which defines Hell?

I knew myself of comeuppance for it, images of fire and brimstone being the most essential characteristic of Hell. The suffering and torture, the absolute absence of good but for that last piece of self that screams for it. If only these were described, it would take little insight to imagine that one was speaking of the tortures of life after evil.

But what of those who loved to burn?

I knew purgatory. I know heaven—of that I'm sure. I usually imagined myself in hell when I fretted and worried the constant precarious placement of her feet upon such smooth and predictable surfaces would lead her to a fate worse than death.

My greedy arms.

Purgatory was easily defined. It was the ceaseless, insistent ticking of a clock that marked not a thing for me, but rather marked the one I doted for. Each second stealing pieces of her, slowly gathering her up for the time she would be no more. Each second tempting and trying my control. To walk that line between heaven and hell. To let her live, or to take her life. Hell had a second option. I could just kill her.

Heaven also seemed to depend on time. The absence of it. Measured in moments rather than the unreliable seconds that in her presence could both fly and slow immeasurably, making time itself a whole unreliable estimation on the length and importance of it's individual moments.

Hell though? What of _it_?

Heaven seared me thoroughly, so was hell cold? It was hard to imagine something more terrible than the lack of her. The _loss_ of her. 

Perhaps then, Hell was simply that. Just as darkness is the absence of light, cold the absence of heat, then Hell is the absence of Heaven.

It was not the fires that seared my throat, but the chill of her destitution. Not the haunting of my past, but the horrors of the future. Hell was breathing freely, without fear. In Hell, I drowned with no hopes of sinking further into her. Hell was walking the righteous path, a parallel to the one I had walked from birth.

Heaven was burning. Heaven was feeling the crushing weight of her presence on my heart, her own beat echoing in the hollow silence of my chest. Heaven was the great compliment of my vices, pulling together into a great siege of pleasure.

And her? What of she? What of _I? _She put all of me into question, pulling our truth and knowledge in the wake of her passage. simultaneously, she shrouded herself in the enigma of chime. Of Annabel.

The thoughts of her, the ever compelling desire to untangle her from everything that clung to her as stubbornly as I.

And suddenly I was halfway to my car, the lingering scent of her provoking the enticing memory of her. I was going to see her.

I couldn't help but grin at the giddy anticipation of it all. My next thought was a jovial one.

I was going to burn.

**A/N: Hey!! Sorry for this, but since fanfiction is apparently threatening to pull stories that have mature content, (Prostitution and sex being mature) I left the forward here for people who are interested in reading it on Twilighted (dot) net. Hope you enjoy the rest of the story. (And I'm desperately looking for beta's)**


	2. Lady of My night

**L****ady of My Night**

**Teeny Tiny Twilight**

I sighed, watching the cracks in the road disappear under my car, a dull labyrinth of spider webs, intersecting each other, imaginary patterns to occupy my mind in the confines of humanity's monotony. This section of the city was better kept, black tar band-aids over the majority of the more severe fissures, while the rest of the minor blemishes were left to grow into more severe problems. The roads reflected the state of the city itself.

My windows were open, letting in the scents of my past, though the memories I had of this place were short. Carlisle hadn't wanted a new born running around the crowded streets of Chicago.

It had been so _long_ ago too, while I had remained unchanged, making this new scenery even more foreign. My house was gone. The hospital my parents had died in had been so remodelled that only one wall of the original structure still remained. The biggest difference perhaps though, was the neighbourhood. As I passed in my sleek Volvo, drug dealers and junkies alike ducked out of the way of my headlights as if they were on coming traffic, melting back into the shadows like rumours and ghosts.

I didn't remember my human life, of course, but I recalled, as Carlisle and I had passed through a year or so after my turning, where the butcher and the baker used to sell goods. In their place were convince stores with bars over the windows and clubs that could just as easily pass for bars.

It wasn't nostalgia that had me roaming the streets today, though.

Jasper was suffering.

Two weeks without hunting, was not especially difficult for any of us, but Jasper hadn't lived our life for as long. He wasn't as practiced. So to flirt with fate, we had released him—unfed—into a close population of human bodies to see how he would fare.

But of course that was too easy. So rather than just let him into a crowd, we brought him into a population of hormonal young bodies, pumping with chaotic emotion, blood, and a disregard for the facade of our age. Their shallow attentions turned to the snare of our beauty instantly.

Today had been especially hard for Jasper, the first day back to school after Christmas vacation was always met with anticipation, nervousness, and a burning desire to please peers with new toys. Being accepted into the human world wasn't so hard as most of the children thought.

And now Jasper was trying to make amends for his less than benign attitude today towards us all, but especially to Alice. A harsh look in her direction haunted him for weeks, still trying to compensate for the life he lived previous to this one. I grimaced at the thought of enduring his self inflicted sentence with him for the next decade.

And of course it was to be mental.

With the fall of religious power in the last century or so, self inflicted physical torture was not something seen as noble any longer. People were committed nowadays.

I dragged in a deep breath of the human saturated air. These few hours in the buzzing of unfamiliar minds that didn't so easily intrude on my thoughts was not the time to stew in a particularly uncomfortable day.

Now if only I could move as fast as I desired, sharing the road as I was with the slower city traffic hindered my progress. I was practically _crawling_ at forty-five miles an hour.

I assured myself that once I hit the freeway, I would drive as fast as my Volvo would allow. The thought alone was enough to make me smile.

Though driving wasn't _quite_ as fun as running, there was a different kind of pleasure to the way the engine purred beneath me. It was additionally liberating in a narcissistic sort of way to breath in the blood of the humans I used to hunt, filtering as it did through the open window, hardly catching my attention. It was empowering to be able to deny something so deeply rooted into my nature. This was a vindictive pleasure today, not that Jasper ever had to know.

As I passed before an average looking night club with a few youth sitting out front, neon lights buzzing outside the building while a thudding bass trembled through the streets, a scent washed through the car.

I was born again.

Newly so.

It was like being thrown through concrete. Hit by a wreaking ball. Having thousands of tons of rock all collapse upon me at once. There was no image violent enough to compare to how the unbearably sweet scent ripped fire through my throat.

My teeth locked, eyes widening and all my senses were suddenly hyper aware.

I was hunting.

The fact that I was still in my car meant nothing, it hadn't even been a tenth of a second and I was just a mere three and a half feet from where the scent had first touched me. It was like I was standing in the shadows again with the sweet human blood of monsters—not unlike me—just inches from my hungry, razor sharp teeth. The feeling multiplied a hundred times over. A thousand times over. It was a never ending rage of fire against my suddenly arid throat.

The need was so profound that I stomped on the brake and had the scent not been diluted by the whipping air through my windows, I may have buried the pedal into the asphalt of the road under my Volvo. I just barely managed to control the muscle movement as it was. My tires screamed and I registered that two people nearly rear-ended me from my sudden stop.

Registered the information, and paid it no mind.

The whole of my mind was consumed with searching for the origin of the scent. Of finding the host to such a delicious fragrance.

There were no witnesses watching my scene, alerted by my protesting breaks. With my muscles already coiled and my throat a brilliant flame of desire, all the witnesses were already gone. They were merely the collateral damage. Each of these young children would die before the sun rose tomorrow. Before even a single hour was up.

For eighty years I had fought to keep the predator in me hidden behind that veil of humanity. It was laughable, truly sardonic how easily it rose above my many walls and barriers, like all that time wasted had been a sick joke thrown back at me. Had it all been pointless then? The great battle against myself to salvage what I no longer was?

How long had I lived and walked among humans, sure that they were safe from me now that I had decided to stop hunting them? Foolishly believing that simply deciding, making a conscious decision to stop, would really ensure their safety. Eighty, ninety years?

I had been sadly mistaken.

I was just as dangerous now as I had been when I was first created. Maybe more dangerous with all the hunting experience I now carried.

I would always be found in the rotting of the corpse, or the terror of a young child's eyes as they stared into darkness. I was the horror of murder, and the agony of recognition. I would always be the monster behind the mask.

It was as I looked to my left to get out of the car, to search and hunt for the scent and kill all the innocents, that I caught my reflection.

It froze me in my place, and most definitely saved lives.

The face I saw there was one I knew well and with an enormous amount of revulsion that came close enough to abhorrence that I was frozen, watching the hungry black eyes glare back at me. Eyes that would soon shine a brilliant demonic red for the horrendous crime I was about to commit.

No human had died at my hand for decades, and now, I was planning a massacre of innocents.

With out moving my head, I was able to count the different minds that stood on the sidewalk, absolutely unawares of the danger they were all in.

Seventeen. Seventeen young innocents. Each of them was focused mainly on my car and the occupant inside. Two, I already knew where prowling the night just as I was about to, though what they were hunting for were male suitors who would pay them for their sexual favours. The rest were just party goers in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I hoped desperately—as I continued to stare at the monster in the mirror who was already trying to pin point exact locations so no time would be wasted in the slaughter while I searched for the host of the wonderful scent—that the one that would die would be one of the prowlers. Maybe if I could just hold myself here long enough…just long enough for the innocents to walk far enough away that they wouldn't become witnesses….

I should have planned this before the scene I had caused. They had all stopped to watch me, and with the beautiful scent still thrashing me around, the wind blowing it my way and slowly making it more and more concentrated, I knew there was no possible way I would be able to linger that long. And what if the blood was of an innocent? I couldn't let them get away. I wasn't physically capable of it.

The monster in the mirror smiled in agreement. The smile was too wide, allowing all my teeth to shine dangerously. Glinting in the light from the orange tinted streetlights, sending aberrant, eight hued rainbows into the mirror, corrupted by the filthy light.

As disgusted with the face in the mirror as I was, as much as I struggled to cringe from the eyes that would soon burn a demonic crimson while my throat was soothed—I was planning the deaths.

I would have to strategically search through the humans, find which one it was that had been the catalyst of this black hour. And then they would all die.

A car whipped close by my car, honking at the obstacle in the road. The wind of its passage was enough to send guiltless, incorruptible air into the car. It gave me a breath of what I could _save_.

Maybe the hour didn't have to be so black. Maybe I could have just enough control to find them, to invite them into my car. Persuading humans was easy, even with things they had been taught from tender ages not to do.

Like climbing into a strange man's car.

It would be easier if they were female. I would be a poor lost stranger looking for directions. Perhaps I would take an interest in the doomed human and lead them back to my car with promises of kisses and coffee dates. A dark kiss at that, the very last one she would ever receive.

If it was a boy…that would make it more difficult. Perhaps I would insult him or take interest in the object of his affection and challenge him to a duel for her favoured regards. Lead him into a dark ally and escape with him before the others were able to pursue us. We would just disappear into the night.

My eyes were still black, dangerous, but I managed to compose my face so it looked normal enough.

Just a lost stranger.

I looked out the open window, getting ready to start my performance when something stopped me again.

The scene was different than the picture in my mind. The seventeen were exactly as I knew they would be by the orientation of their thoughts. That wasn't the problem that undermined my sure footing.

The problem was there were eighteen.

Slightly to the left of the doors leading into the club was a girl. The sensation unbalanced me, and for the first time since my change, I felt...dizzy. Was that the word to describe the feeling of unease, a confusion that made me question my orientation? What was more, was that—as most of the others were—she was staring into the car. Unlike the others, her expression was sharp, calculated. She watched the scene as I did, though I assumed our intentions differed vastly.

There was another unexpected turn of events. The silent mind was making its way over to the car. The girl was small, petite with large brown eyes that were odd. Odd in the way that they appeared too large and too deep. I could even see their depth in the darkness, something bright behind her eyes to lend her that pitch. She was actually quite plane, ordinary but for the eyes.

And the mind.

I was about to exit the car and ignore her, to carry on with my plan and head towards the grouping of younglings who stood watching the approach that could destroy my plan if I didn't put it into action soon. It would seem odd to ignore the help of this troublesome girl and then ask it of the others.

The wrench in my scheme was already too close. My throat was ravaged by another breath of this night's air. I would have to walk directly by her now and that would appear even more peculiar.

My steering wheel was groaning under the pressure that I was putting on it, trying to keep myself seated while I lied to the girl, to get rid of her so that I could start the hunt. I lessened my hold on the rickety piece of rubber, plastic and metal before I scared them all and needed to go with my original plan, the plan that left them dead in the streets while I fed.

It was only as I forced a smile and leaned over the passenger seat to speak more easily with the girl, it was only as she leant down by my window, only as I took a deep breath to speak that I realized this was perhaps the most pre-eminent plan yet.

My pray had come to me.

I locked all my muscles to keep from launching myself at her through the open window, witnesses be damned.

The girl smiled unawares, though her eyes lingered on my frozen smile a second longer then necessary before she spoke.

"You wouldn't happen to be interested in spending a night with me, would you?" She whispered, her voice was dripping with lustful promise, her voice rough. I was sure I saw her hands tremble where they were folded across the opening to the window slightly before disappearing from view. Her horribly sweet scent so strong that I tasted it on my tongue. So close.

This was even better than my pray coming to me.

This was not an innocent.

This was a whore.

She was a killer in her own right, stealing money from men in exchange of allowing them free reign of her body. She tore families apart and was the breeding ground for horrible diseases.

She was a monster, and I felt the small difference it made to me. Just one more rationally justified death. Or I could pretend it was rational. Could pretend that if she really were an innocent, I would have the strength to move my foot to the gas pedal, and drive away.

And then what? The only part of my mind that was even slightly coherent through the haze of her delicious blood asked. I could not face Carlisle after this, though I knew he wouldn't judge me for this sordid crime. I would have to prove to _myself_ that nothing like this was to ever happen again.

My heart felt heavy with this new knowledge. I was going to let my father down. I was going to take another life and I would upset kind Carlisle and loving Esme and all because of one insignificant girl.

I _hated _her, I decided as she cocked her head slightly to the right, wonderingly at me.

I hated her with the blackest of loathing. What right had she to be walking _this_ street _this_ night? What right had she to have even been _born_? What gave her the power? It was criminal to commit such a ghastly crime against, not just my family, but her. Myself. The others who were still in so much danger.

My smile had slipped, and the loathing was apparent on my face now as I glared at this monster, sent from an opposing corner of hell as I to ruin me. All these years of dedicated work at being what Carlisle was—or trying to get close enough to make him proud to know that I was one of his coven, that his choice to turn me had not been a terrible mistake—had all been useless.

"Get in." I snarled while a stronger, much smaller part of my mind wanted to tell her to get out, to leave, and to never come near me again. But how long would I be able to leave _her_ before the temptation was too much? Until I tracked her down? What if when we met again where there were more witnesses and less control? I couldn't even let her go now. Not if I wanted to.

There was no will here. No choice. I _had_ to kill her.

The prostitute flinched slightly at my tone, and I saw that the shaking in her hands had become more apparent as she touched her hair self-consciously.

She took a step away from the window, and I wondered if I had scared her, if she would run. She wouldn't get far.

I'd kill her so quickly that there would be no more chance for fear, no chance for pain, and no chance for the small group who was fast loosing interest in us.

I only wanted to kill one tonight, if that was possible.

But all she had done was step away enough so she could open the door and sit inside the car with me.

The door closed, sending a concentrated storm of fire at me. My mouth was flooded with venom, it didn't dispel the dry ache in my throat or my parched mouth. I didn't do the windows up. That would be too much with her scent thick and rich inside the car now. I wouldn't be able to stop myself. The fact that I had enough control to keep from immediately pressing her throat to my lips was miraculous in itself.

I put the car in gear and took off, looking for a dark ally with no witnesses. No innocent deaths tonight.

The moment the car gained enough speed, I was blasted with warm to dilute the fire, and just as before, it gave me the smallest amount of space inside my clouded mind to think. The hot body warming my right side was of no help to my reasoning process.

A small point of reason managed to reach me.

Did I want to take her life?

No, I didn't.

Did I want to drink her blood?

More then anything I had ever wanted.

I would have combed the earth for this one girl had I known she existed. I would drink her now if there wasn't a women on the other side of me, staring at my lure. Would probably be already dead if not for the air rushing through the window. The woman across from us had slowed, sneaking glances at me, amazed at the perfect symmetry of my face, at the smoothness of my skin and the perfect proportions of my features.

What she saw: a beautiful man.

What she was seeing: a killer.

She would notice if I leaned over and began to drink. It didn't matter. I would not have the control to stop, to continue driving while I let myself have the pleasure of feeling her warm, thick, sweet—

_Stop_.

If I kept thinking about it, I wouldn't be able to keep myself in place.

The car in front of me carried two occupants. Both lost, their driving too slow. My fingers twitched with impatience, the heart next to me pounding a rhythm that didn't seem even, pumping blood through her veins too quickly. We were moving so slow now that the wind wasn't circulating nearly enough air. Her scent was filling the car.

I was going to drown in it.

All of my lanes were blocked, and as her heart pulsed again, another wave of heat and delicious temptation washed higher, thicker than the last. I considered jumping the curb to get around the sudden traffic.

If I didn't get her somewhere secluded soon, I would snap and all these humans would see. I would have to kill, hundreds maybe, on this suddenly busy street, and then have to find a way to dispose of the cars. That would only bring more attention, more deaths.

Just a little longer. I could hold myself in place for just a little longer.

My finger's twitched in impatience, a low growl building in my throat. Maybe not.

The distracted and lost couple in front of me sped up suddenly, too quickly, and hit the car in front of them. It was nothing major, but I heard a tail light shatter and hit the asphalt.

_Oh no, oh God. We are going to be _so_ late now. No way am I ever going to get that damn promotion now. And now the car…._

I wondered how his priorities would change if I were to get out of the car now. If I were to tap on the window and explain my current position, my plans for the young girl in the car with me. Explain to him that in my current state of abandon, everyone was a potential victim.

The traffic stopped and I was trapped. My self control was quickly wasting away.

_Just a little longer. Hardly a moment. Just long enough to turn into that ally up ahead._

I ran a hand through my hair, an aggravated habit that had started for human company. Possibly even something that had carried through my change with me. When the people started to get out of their cars I pinched the bridge of my nose.

Maybe killing all these humans wouldn't be such a tragedy.

I needed _out_ of here. I needed to shed the last of my humanity and feed on the woman-child sitting beside me, watching my face with too curious eyes and a too silent mind. From the corner of my eye, it looked like she was struggling with a decision.

Aggravation added to the loathing that was a building heat inside me. Contrarily, it left me feeling more icy cold where its fires burned me. It _should_ have been a pleasant relief from the other, much more potent burn in my throat. My teeth ground together as I tried to focus on something—_anything—_other than the scent.

I started to imagine it, the way her skin would feel when it was pressed against my lips, when my teeth pierced through the fragile membrane, so much like silk, and drew out the hot pulsing blood. The way it would _taste_—

"Are you okay?"

The voice that had spoken was soft and quiet, not longer rough. I already knew where it came from. I worked to unlock my teeth and turned to look—to _glare_—at her for even having the nerve to pull the very air she breathed into her lungs to produce such a ludicrous question.

Was I _okay? _I was as _okay _as she was going to be in a short moment.

But as I gave her the darkest look I have ever parted with, a small hint of reality hit me as I looked into her eyes again. They were different now, still deep and dark, but they were pulled in real concern for me rather than the cool intelligence I had seen before. For a stranger no less, that had done nothing to deserve her bother. The lack of knowledge did more than unsettle me, it seemed to pull out my footing.

The light that fell through the windshield—light from the full moon—fell on her skin and I saw just how translucent it was, it looked so delicate with the dark pulsing just under the surface, as if just to lightly touch her skin would make it give way….

My throat flamed with vicious need. Reality fuelled the hate to a staggering degree.

I looked back out the window. "Fine." My throat was just as decadent as it had ever been, but there was only the faintest growl in my voice. An effect of my temper.

The addlepate parade who hadn't considered all the traffic they were holding up with their information exchange was finally climbing back into their cars and I was ready to hit the gas. The irritation continued to climb as I wondered why the small, delicate girl didn't run while the car was stopped. Not that I would let her get far, but she had to have some inkling of the danger she was in.

I was starting to question what I had assumed was shrewd astuteness I had observed before.

What was she thinking now that left her sitting beside the one who would take her life? Wasshe scared, or was she truly ignorant to what lay beneath my icy glare? Why weren't her instincts making her fidget nervously beside me?

I looked at her again to find her studding my face in spite of everything, looking like she was trying to read something off _my_ features when it was her eyes that were opaque. When I caught her eye, she blushed and quickly looked down.

The irony of how clear that single thought was, at being caught staring at the rude stranger, while my mind automatically probed the space her mind should be was biting—no pun intended.

The easy pooling of blood just beneath her skin did nothing to help my control. The fact that I was so _close_ helped nothing. It felt like we were alone here in the dark, it would be pathetically simple to just kill her now.

I was still on the road though, and I wanted to lose myself fully in this. If I would torture myself later for her murder, then I was going to thoroughly enjoy it with no distractions. It took everything in my power to keep my coiled muscles from springing onto the girl.

The girl—and I realized I still didn't even know the name of the one I was about to kill—looked up, and smiled. I saw that the look was confident, but there was a slight concave curve to her shoulders that resembled her trying to protect herself. I realized I was still glaring at her, making her uncomfortable, unsure.

There was a sudden flash of anxiousness in myself as I realized I had no idea what she was about to do. I had never encountered anything like her mind, and it was unnerving not knowing what was happening.

She moved closer to me. My nostrils flared, my hands tightening on the wheel. Was she _insane_? Had she lost her _mind_? Was she purposely undermining my control?

She avoided my eyes quickly as my expression darkened again, then she unbuckled her seat belt and ducked under my arm—still rigidly gripping the steering wheel to save her a few more measly moments on the earth.

The button on my trousers popped open and my eyes widened with comprehension.

"Miss?" I asked quickly as my zipped slid down. I would have moved to push her away if I hadn't known that unclenching my hands now, to touch her, would invariably be the death of her. There was no way that I could touch her, feel the boiling blood under the surface of her translucent skin and not bring that skin to my lips. Not crush her slight bones in my uncontrolled hands.

How was it that_ I_ was suddenly the very helpless one here?

My eyes narrowed at the dark road ahead of me when she didn't answer me. The back of the girl's hand brushed my abdomen, and all my muscles clenched.

An electric jolt flashed through my body, followed quickly by a searing heat that left my skin warm, the inflicted skin tingling painlessly. The physical feeling her touch created was in direct opposition with the hate that her being created.

The girl gasped too, started and yanking her hand back quickly from where it had made contact with my icy flesh. The temperature, the icy smooth texture of my skin, had started her.

I hadn't thought of a story that would adequately describe why skin that _should_ be warm, no matter the circumstances, was chilled.

I made one up on the spot. "Sorry." I managed—more apologetic than anyone could ever know—"I have a lot of calcium in my skin, it doesn't get as much blood as it should." I was about to continue, to sell her fully on this lie when I realized it wouldn't matter much in a few minutes. She wouldn't be walking away to tell the story.

She craned her long, graceful, tempting neck to bob her head in a quick nod, her eyes still wide with surprise. The full, shape of her lips—absolutely unbalanced—entranced me for a short dull moment. The way one might stare a second longer than necessary at a crooked picture frame. Then she removed the last article of clothing between her hot, tingling skin, and own my icy dead flesh.

Or it had been dead. Now it seemed full of life, a purely physical relish of her company. I burned, I tingled, I dehydrated. I seemed to be falling appart on the spot.

I gave a low growl of frustration. I had expected that contact with my alien skin would have turned her off of such activities. But, in a loutish way that I was embarrassed of, I wanted to feel her touch again. The place her hand had brushed my skin was still tingling slightly in a wonderfully pleasant way.

I sighed, frustrated with myself just as much as her. "Miss, please, I don't—"I gasped, my head falling back on the head rest and my jaw falling slack as a pleasure I have never known consumed me so fully that for one moment, I almost forgot her blood. "—_A__h_."My hips jerked up, and her hands—warm enough to instantly feel through my jean clad legs—tried to push me back down.

This feeling, this brilliant warmth, oddly enough was the antidote to the fire raging in my dry, aching throat. The fire was soothed, along with the constant gush of voices I had been tuning out.

The sweltering moistness of her mouth was enough to sooth my coiled muscles. Deaths, murder, destruction, fury. It all disappeared, what was left were their antonyms. And then it was like someone had ripped the roof of my car off and I could see the sky beautifully unhindered.

Stars danced in front of my eyes.

The girl pulled away, and I saw through the corner of my eye that she looked a little…smug. She wiped the back of her hand across her lips, the back of her hand shimmering with my release."Better?"

I swallowed the venom in my mouth as the pleasure faded and the burn slowly started to return. "Much." My whole dead body felt like it was alive again, like the electricity that I had tasted in her touch was buzzing through my body, leaving warm tingles wherever it touched beneath my skin.

When I stayed frozen where I was, my eyes closed as I revelled in the fast dissipating feeling, the girl laughed quietly beside me, and zipped my pants up again.

There was a loud impatient honk behind us. I looked up, startled to see that the road before me was empty but for a few small triangles of the orange plastic from the broken tail light still littering the dark asphalt.

_Move, Dammit! What now?.... _

_Fucking teenagers, figures. This is why I keep telling...._

_I_ was the one holding traffic up now. I stepped on the gas and we shot forward just as the stop light changed from green to amber.

"What's your name?" I whispered as we ran a stop sign in my frantic search. Not for a dark ally now. That would come later. Now I needed a place were I could further explore her services.

The whole of my rational being cringed, my stomach knotted in sickness. I wanted to climb out of my body. Wanted to put a barrier of flesh between these sick desires, and what I knew was right. Her pulse continued to warm me, each beat like a physical strike against my skin.

_I'm here. _The warmth taunted, _I'm here and I'm so close. _I didn't know what of her was calling to me now. Her blood? Her body?

It went against the morals that had been instilled in me. If I had gone to see a lady of the night when my parents were alive, it would have shamed my name.

It still would.

"Chime."

My eyes closed as a new kind of sickness set in, riddling me with diseases. There was not just one monster occupying my mind now. There were two.

One was the one I had been battling since my change; I thought I known how to beat down that foe—for the most part—until this night.

The new monster was less callous, but more unfamiliar. Harder to control. Harder to dissuade when all it asked for was a touch. To simply touch her hair, or bring her hand back to the seam of my jeans. Her scent filled everything corner, seeping into my impenetrable flesh, exciting me in new ways.

"Chime?" I wondered sceptically. Then I remembered that many prostitutes created a false name for themselves.

Though _Chime_ heard the scepticism she just looked out the window. "Mhmm."

"Do you have a last name?" I wondered, this ruse was an enjoyable distraction. I had a false name too, though my family would argue that ferociously. My true name before I had become a Cullen had been Masen. The change was a tribute to the loss of my humanity.

Chime hesitated for a moment. "Fowl."

I raised my eyebrows at her, before dropping them and turning into a hotel. I nearly groaned at the cliché, but Chime made no sound.

I regretted the short game I had played with her. It was one thing to kill a charming serial killer, it was another to kill this girl who was surprisingly agreeable in a genuine way.

I took a breath and that thought turned to ash.

There was no possible way that she would live through the copulation, though I would try to keep her alive for as long as was possible. The reason was not noble. It would simply be a shame to let her blood cool while I was so thoroughly distracted.

Killing her first was out of the question too, I doubted I would feel the same satisfaction from a corpse.

I wasn't even shocked at the callousness of my thoughts anymore. This woman easily dragged out the very worst of me.

I exited the car, only to find that she was already opening her door and stumbling out on unsure legs, more than willing to follow me without being asked. She gave me a bright fake smile that I didn't return. I turned and walked through the front doors, keeping careful tabs on her in case, in a moment of insight—of _intelligence_—she decided to run.

She didn't.

There was a man behind a counter decorated with brilliant orange specks and lime green plastic background. A seventies induced shudder moved through me. Then, with out pausing, I grabbed a key off the counter and replaced it with a bill.

"Hey you can't…" _Oh my god, who caries bills this big? _"Enjoy your stay!"

I started a pace that had Chime jogging unsteadily to keep up. Her face told a story in its blankness. This was routine for her, she was used to being hustled into hotel rooms quickly and unceremoniously.

This all seemed almost…dreamlike—if that was possible for one who hadn't dreamt in decades. I couldn't truly believe that what was happening was real. I was hurrying a strange girl into a cheap hotel room, not knowing her real name, or her knowing mine. I would never have condoned myself of this kind of behaviour before tonight. I couldn't believe I was doing it now.

I peeked at the fading number on the rounded plastic that was attached to the key and sighed when I realized how close the room was. Lucky. Or unlucky depending on which way you looked at it.

The new monster in my mind celebrated how close victory was, while the older monster waited patiently for his own turn. I couldn't find _me_ anymore in this parade of vices. Carlisle's face was just a dim picture in my mind I couldn't quite call forward.

I almost darted right by the room, and I stopped so suddenly that a warm, soft pressure thumped into my back.

Instinctively, my hand shot out to balance her. The _only_ gentlemanly courtesy I had shown her tonight.

The moment our skin made contact, a brilliant fire shot through my throat and fashioned a brilliant carnal need behind my black eyes. I grabbed her and nearly threw her into the room in my efforts to keep from just _taking_ her. I tried very, _very_ hard to be gentle with her, to not break any of her very delicate bones, but all I wanted to do was crush her against me. The two conflicting desires, plus the war to take myself back was too much of a distraction to keep me grounded long enough to think anything through.

Chime was on the bed then, and she understood part of my anxiousness, quickly stripping out of her clothes with a halfway worried expression on her face as she watched my frantic pace.

My clothes were off as quickly as my human charade allowed. Old habits warring with my muddled mind.

I was on the bed in the next second. There were no sweet, loving kisses as I had imagined my first act of love would have entailed. The monster that yearned for her blood would not allow it, while the monster that lusted for her body desperately wished for it.

I was between her legs—perpendicular to her on my knees to keep as much space between her throat and my mouth—so quickly that she hardly had time to take her last garment off. "Wait, wait!" She cried, trying to put some distance between us.

The small sliver of the gentleman I had been just hours before barely made it through to let her push me a few inches away from her warm little body. I waited impatiently while she handed me a small foiled square from her small fist. I hadn't looked at her body at all but for the soft flesh of her sex, her legs.

In all of this, it just didn't seem right.

My eyes narrowed and I made another attempt to gain entrance. I was already between her legs, so she couldn't close them to me. Instead she cupped her sex to stop my entry.

I glared fiercely at her—skipping over her breasts quickly—with so much white hot hate it should have burned her and left her cold, shocking her into stillness and submissiveness.

Humans all reacted the same way to fear, to the way our eyes that could look so much like theirs could be so predatorily as well. Instead of flinching away, or retracting her hand to give me what I wanted as I expected, she glared fiercely back at me.

I felt unsteady again.

"I don't have many rules, but this is a big one. I'm _not_ getting pregnant or catching anything. Put it on." I finally realized what trivial human thing she had been wrestling with. A condom.

Absolutely pointless. I was sterile and a virgin, there was nothing I could give her, but she didn't look like she would back down from this, and rape was not something I wished to add to my long list of errs.

"You have to be kidding me." She muttered under her breath as I read the instructions on the package quickly.

When met with such thoughts, I had always rapidly skipped from the mind. Now though, I had no experience to call on. "Shh." I managed while I unrolled the rubber circle onto myself. And then her hand disappeared and I was inside her.

As my flesh encountered her tight walls, I seemed to expand to fill every inch of my body. Every inch of hers. I couldn't find the shame here, couldn't feel the burn her blood enticed but for where her skin met mine. I was fully aware of the delicate silk under my fingers as I held her body, hand splaying curiously across her abdomen as I rock in her experimentally.

It was…there were no words. I sighed; there was so little effort to the force I needed to move inside her. It was so perfectly calculated that I could almost convince myself that it was instinct. I knew, if I so pleased, I could find a greater pleasure from the warm, delicate skin that so easily gave way for mine. I knew it just as I knew that if I leaned forward and drank, I could feel her blood warm my throat. I did neither for the same reason.

I wanted her to keep.

So this was what the whole fuss had been about. I now understood the sickening fascination with sex.

Warm legs wrapped around my waist then, pulling me deeper, a moan. All sense of reason was lost and I grabbed onto her, the new friction the movement had created made me see stars again, but this was all leading to something far more profound than just the night sky. Something big was coming.

My world exploded into a brilliance of light.

And terror.

A sudden surge of emotion overtook me. A crushing weight seemed to settle around me, my chest carrying the brunt of it. The feeling terrified me, but through my panic, I felt it seemed familiar, from a different life were it wouldn't be uncommon to have to fight to breathe. To have to need the breath at all.

The understanding came then, of a trying to keep my head above the water, of feeling it crush down and fight to push through my lips and down my throat. Drowning.

I was drowning in the open air.

The pleasure faded as I continued to choke. As an immortal, could I _drown_?

The terror was enough to overpower the thirst that was reviving itself. I jumped away from the girl, for surely this sensation of dying originated from her. There was no other explanation.

I pulled my clothes on quickly, while Chime lay on the bed still. She quickly sat up, one leg raised to hide her heaving chest from me in a self-conscious gesture. Her eyes were imploring, asking me silent questions that I couldn't hear. Couldn't answer.

It seemed to finally dawn on her as I was heading for the door that I had left her alive…and she, apparently, wasn't having that.

"Wait! I need to be paid." She finally spoke just as I was fleeing, away from her and her alien sensations.

I didn't know her charge, nor did I have the ability to stop even for a short second to find out. For the first time since I had been turned, I was actually _scared _of something other than what I was capable of. I was still drowning though I'd put all of three meters between our bodies.

I threw my whole wallet into the room and shut the door, making a run for it. I dropped the human façade and bolted down the stairs, passing the empty counter. The man had disappeared to hide the bill in a safe place.

I was out in the parking lot in less than three seconds.

No minds were aware of my sudden materialization outside my car. I was about to climb in and put more distance between us, to run as far from the girl who seemed capable of switching our roles—predator and prey—when I felt the hair on the back of my neck tingle.

I did have the strangest sensation of being watched though I felt no intrusion onto my mind.

The suspicion—the thought alone—made a sick, ice cold dread churn in my stomach before trickling down through my empty veins and reaching out into my muscles, pulling them tight. As I turned to glance over the empty illuminated squares of empty window through the nearly barren hallway I caught the chillingly discordant sight of two very wide brown eyes staring at me with shock through the frame of a window.

I met her eyes, and a terror filled voice cried, '_Run_'.

I climbed into my car and hit the gas.

I needed to disappear.

I needed to disappear, _Now_.


	3. The Experiment

**The Experiment**

**Teeny Tiny Twilight**

I could feel the small notches in the steering wheel where my fingers had pressed too hard in the stress of the moment. I hadn't even noticed at the time how the plastic was slowly warped under the brutal strength of my hands. It was uncomfortable driving like that, my hands naturally resting at ten and two when the grooves rested at a lazy nine and three, having relaxed my hold as I had moved to get out of the car. My fingers wanted to slip into the grooves that were uniquely mine, while common sense warred to keep my hands placed correctly.

Oh moan, oh groan. Of all the things to complain about!

This was hardly the most major concern at the moment. The second most important matter was that I was slowly coming up, seeming to surface for air now. My chest wasn't so compressed, and that made it easier to breath, to open my mouth and pull in air without fear of the strange unknown weight finding its way down my throat and into my lungs.

Why I _wanted_ to breathe was beyond me: the girl's scent was still stained into the seats. The scent was merely a faint echo of the actual smell of her. An echo only, but _almost_ enough to convince me that I needed to turn around and _personally_ take care of the primary discomfort that itched at the most sensitive places in my heart.

I had been seen.

This fear had my chest tighten in a different way from the drowning. It was easier to place, to work through. This feeling was like the scent that was slowly being aired out of my car; only a weak echo.

A strange thought entered my mind. The feelings the woman had pulled forth from me had been the first real thing I had felt in decades. That was why everything else felt so washed out and anaemic in comparison. The thought was only a faint whisper in my ear and so easy to push from my mind. I shook it off, moving on to more important things.

What had she seen? I couldn't quite grasp onto the memory of getting to the car. It, like the rest of this life, had been crystal clear, every inch of rust on the old car out front, just barely being touched by the light seeping through the entrance from the hotel lobby. I couldn't call forward if I had been running when she saw me, or _running_. The memory was …unsure, as I had been more concerned with grasping back onto reality, and less concerned with what my body was doing.

I started shaking.

What did it matter, really? The worst she could do was tell someone that some strange man had suddenly appeared in front of his car after having been on the second floor of a hotel just moments before. No one would take her seriously, and eventually that doubt would leak into the memory, and she would slowly rationalize the rude stranger. Human minds could be so easily deceived.

What was the danger, really?

I was still shaking, my jaw locked shut, a sound bubbling up my raw throat.

'_Edward?'_

My back stiffened, and then relaxed in defeat. I eased my foot off the gas slightly and the blue numbers stopped climbing higher and higher, instead levelling out at an even one-thirty. Alice, who had just moments before been racing through the forest parallel to my car, was now running close beside it. She pulled the door open and then slipped inside. There was only a short scream of wind before the door was violently slammed back against its body.

Gently—like letting a breath out—my lips parted for the sound in the perfectly miserable finale to cap off the night.

I had expected a heavy sigh, or maybe a low growl at myself. At the sheer stupidity of the moment because _of course_ Alice would have seen me leaving. Running up north towards the sharp mountain air. To air out my mind as it would the car.

It was neither sound.

I started laughing—a strangely hard, breathless sound that shook my whole frame. The blue numbers started to climb sharply again.

I felt a little stoned.

"Edward?" Alice asked carefully, watching and listening to me as she tried to place this Edward she was seeing now with the reason I was leaving. "What's happening?" No horror, no terrible images of the strange girl's throat torn open, or even of my first—and presumably final—act of love.

_Act of love? _No, it hadn't been that at all.

I stayed silent, waiting for her to continue her questioning. _Why did you do it? Are you going back?_ But it was neither of these questions. She was absolutely perplexed, trying to look into my future to find hints of the past with no visible luck.

And it struck me that she might actually _not know_. My mood started to slowly darken back to where it had been just a second ago as my finger again grazed the grooves. The stress.

The shame.

My shoulders drooped, and the laughter slowed into pitiful chuckles before ending in a sigh. I didn't want to tell her of what had just happened to me. Not yet. I needed a moment to rationalize it myself.

"Edward?" Alice asked again quietly. '_What happened to you?'_

Her phone tinkled a light tone in the heavy mood of the car, and she waited a second, still watching me with concern before answering her phone, never taking her eyes off me. "Hey, Jaz. I'm here with him now."

"Can he hear me?" Jasper asked, his voice slightly off through the filter of the speakers, but the faint trace of his Texan accent and smooth way our kind spoke easily distinguished him. I concentrated on the short staccato lines in the road as they disappeared beside my car. They glowed in a brilliant line, leading me, tempting me back to where I had been before. I passed, watching the distance collect in my rear view mirror. I didn't like it.

"Yes." And then she handed me the phone, anticipating his next question.

I took it. "Can I speak with Carlisle?"

There was a surprised pause, and then, "Yes, of course, Edward. Are you..."

"Yes. I'd like to speak with him now please, Jasper." I cut him off before he could finish as politely as I was capable of. I wasn't angry at Jasper.

There was no sound on the other end of the phone. It was suddenly just Carlisle's voice. "Edward, son, how are you?"

There was a wonderful moment in that simple question where Carlisle had called me son, confidently claiming me as his own when I didn't deserve it. I knew he would continue to call me his son, continue to offer me a place beside him even as I continued to do nothing to deserve it, bound by those first years where we were the only one the other had. One person to confide in when the thirst reared up strong and ugly to steal away the humanity Carlisle helped me re-cultivate, or the admittance of feeling alone, or questioning if living this unfulfilled life redeemed us any in the eyes of God.

It gave me the strength to tell him of the weakness, just as I had over eighty years ago. I swallowed thickly, taking a deep breath as Alice calmed down enough to pick up on the faint scent of human in the car.

Curiously, she sniffed the head rest.

"Have you ever encountered a human that smelled better than any other?" I wondered quietly as I followed the curve in the road, my hands sliding into the new addition to my steering wheel comfortably.

It was silent for a while on the other end of the phone, and I started to worry that he hadn't. That this was wrong. So much worse than it had been before. But then his voice was there, reassuring in my ear. "Yes." And then there was the unmistakable sound of him switching roles, from Carlisle my father, to Carlisle the doctor that couldn't judge. "Now I need to know. Are they okay?"

"Yes." Maybe confused, trying to grasp back onto the thin threads of reality just as I was, but okay. For now.

"Are _you_ okay?" Carlisle, my father, was back.

"Shaken." I whispered. "And something else happened." I hesitated, unsure how to best phrase this. The question. Would any of them even know the answer? Maybe what I had felt was simply the reaction of...becoming intimate with a human. Something about their warmth and fragility that elicited a feeling in the chilled and stony.

Being intimate with her didn't seem to reflect the mood at the time, either.

"What is it?" Carlisle seemed at ease, sure that the girl was safe now, his kindly nature was satisfied. Alice must have told him I was leaving, and he seemed to agree now it was a good idea. I could always return, but if I stayed, and I killed someone...well, that wasn't so reversible.

If only he knew I was running from cowardice.

"She was"—I corrected myself. She _still_ was. Still breathing. Still—"_is_ a prostitute." I let that sink in, and then, much more quietly: "And I paid her for her…services." I felt the shame of the moment falling over me that seemed to have skipped me during the actual _act. _"I took her body." I said even more quietly, and I felt that the disgust must be showing itself on my skin, becoming a permanent part of my flesh. Reflecting the inside.

It was absolutely silent. Alice, who had been halfway turned to better smell the seat that Chime had been in, froze, her mouth falling open, looking like she had been caught in the act of taking a large bite out of my head rest. It was absolutely silent on Carlisle's end.

I didn't say anything. Simply let it sink in.

I don't think it did.

Carlisle was quiet in that nonjudgmental silence of his that only he seemed capable of for a long moment, before finally saying goodbye. "I hope you find what you're looking for Edward. May you return soon, my son."

I nodded, throat tight.

The line went dead before I could answer.

For some strange, inexplicable reason, Alice decided to stay with me rather than return home to Jasper.

For that I was immensely grateful.

And annoyed.

"Alice, please understand how touched I am that you are here with me now. You can have no idea what that means to me. But right now, maybe you should be back at home."

'_Everything before but is bullshit.'_ She thought the saying sourly to herself.

"I mean it."

"Then why should I leave you? It makes no sense. You're in a moment of great change. You just lost your _virginity_! If not to celebrate _that_ occasion—"

"It is nothing to celebrate." I snapped, too loud and sharp in the close car. Slowly, I pulled the girl's scent in, trying to calm myself and not doing well at all. I tried again in a much more level voice when all I wanted to do was scream. "Without me there, everyone is vulnerable. What if someone recognizes something familiar about us from a movie, or a book, or"—An unstable prostitute raving about mad men with super powers? I let that thought trail off before picking it up again. "Without you there to watch for these things, something, could—conceivably—happen to them."

"Or I could watch them from beside you, and _nothing_ could happen. And even if something did—conceivably—happen"—she was mocking me now—"I would only be a phone call away. There's no danger. You need me, so this is where I'll be."

"_I'll_ tell you where to go." I growled angrily to myself as my fingers glided again over my marks.

Alice giggled quietly from beside me, her scent slowly becoming stronger than that short fit of weakness. My _only_ slip in more than eighty years. It wasn't even really a slip, all things considered. She was able to walk away.

Maybe Alice was right; it wouldn't be the first time. This was a time of change for me…maybe I had just proved something to myself. I was strong enough to hold myself in this car while _she_ sat so close. Was able to take her—most adequate description of the event so far—and still not kill her. Maybe this was a time of _growth_ for me.

I allowed myself to smile a little with Alice's laughter, feeling the smallest bit lighter.

It was merely a time of growth.

"But it'll be a time of growth!"

I stared at Tanya flatly.

The snow had settled in soft sprinkles of dusty power around me, and I closed my eyes and concentrated on that rather than the ill feeling of frustration I felt with us both. Her, for having misunderstood my meaning when I had dubbed the occasion as something to grow from. Myself for allowing her to annoy me when I, of all people, knew she had—mostly—good intentions. And it _is_ the thought that counts.

When I had said it was an experience to grow from, I had meant just that. Grow _from_. Away from. Never-to-experience-anything-so-disastrous-again, from.

She had imagined I meant that I would take the experience and run with it. Enjoy the merits of vampire-human intimacies. Join her in her quest to conquer the opposite sex in….er, sex.

At my look she dropped her arms and enthusiasm, reverting back to the Tanya I was slightly more comfortable with. "Well, now what?"

"Please," Just a moment. Just a second to myself to take inventory of the destruction that Chime had left me in. "I really would rather be alone."

'_Well, I really would rather be in your pants, but you don't see me complaining. Much.'_ She was joking, trying to elicit a smile from my desolate expression. It had only occurred to me that this was a horrible place to be halfway through my story where I explained my difficulties with the human, her blood, and her body.

Of all the places to go, I visit the seductress's lair.

Finally I smiled, if only because I knew that Tanya would take it as a compliment to be called a seductress.

Tanya smiled grandly back, and I opened my eyes in time to see it come to full bloom on her face. Perfectly flawless. Gorgeous, even, with the background of the clear night sky behind her, a billion starts swirling together into perfect chaos.

And then my attention was unwillingly drawn back to the memory of being absolutely mesmerized for those few short moments on the uneven shape of _her_ lips, and I wondered why I couldn't be captured in the same way by The Beautiful Tanya.

I looked back up to the sky, hoping to see the vivid colours of close planets and distant suns against all the empty space. Instead I only saw the plain shape of her face, her expression: not quite confident, not quite insecure, and not quite anything I had ever witnessed before.

I sighed.

"You know, Edward," Tanya said slyly, "As your _very best_ friends, you know we can't just leave you here to mope."

Alice, who was quietly standing a few yards further back than Tanya—a comfortable distance—didn't feel at all strange to so easily be called my best friend. We had a bond that was not unlike mine and Carlisle's. Tanya, on the other hand, felt she was stepping past her bounds a bit. I didn't have the heart to tell her to turn around and see the difference was more than the five feet of space between them.

"I'm not moping." I said shortly. And then realized I was and quickly changed my expression to a more pensive one. "I'm thinking."

Tanya raised an eyebrow at me. "Very convincing."

Alice smiled, and then walked forward, into the conversation to—I hoped—help me.

I was wrong.

"Maybe it is a good idea." She said, slowly coming off the fence and choosing her side. The opposing one. "If only to get your confidence back. You don't have to do anything but go with us. Just look and realize that you are still _you_. Nothing changed, Edward." She smiled softly at the last part, '_As much as we all might sometimes wish, you are far too stubborn to be anything _but _you.'_

I gave her a hard look, but some part of me was relieved to have been recognized. It was just like Alice to sense my despair. Sense the fear that I would walk out on the street and see women differently than I always had before. That the new monster was just as permanent a part of me as the old one was. Like a new kind of change in me had taken place. That I would feel the need to take all the women I saw here after into a dark corner and use them like the cad I had proven myself to be.

The smallest inkling of hope shone through. Or maybe Alice was right. The girl—_Chime; _I could at least have the decency to use her pseudo name—had set off my equilibrium. It would be just as reasonable to assume that I would suddenly thirst ravenously for every woman that passed as well.

I took a deep breath, and then sighed, standing up to a round of applause from both Alice and Tanya. And it scared me, because the standing part obviously hadn't been difficult enough to elicit that kind of response.

How, I thought desperately, could this possibly get any worse?

The first step, I was assured, was simple: get in the car. No problems there, other than Alice watching how my fingers naturally fit into the grooves on the steering wheel, and then my annoyed reaction as I placed them firmly in their appropriate positions.

The second step of the plan was to drive into town. Again, no problem. The day was just ending, and I realized with a shock that it would be about my third day since meeting the girl. Exactly, in a few hours. Time kept moving, the sun continued to rise and fall, her heart kept beating….nothing catastrophic had come of our meeting.

Then why did it feel like everything had suddenly changed? I thought for sure that the earth had at least fallen out of orbit, sending us careening towards the sun. I watched the people on the street that walked in the dull twilight here. Life went on, and that gave me some small degree of comfort that was quickly lost in step three.

I parked smoothly against the curb in front of a restaurant that had been closed since seven-thirty. There was a nearby sign that directed that should there be an overflow of customers, there was a second lot behind the building. It seemed quite optimistic for the state the restaurant was in.

I walked around to open both Tanya's and Alice's doors, but only Tanya waited for me. Alice was already on the side walk, waiting for us, her body leaning towards the nearest boutique. Tanya rose smoothly from the car, and I locked it, turning to face the two of them.

Alice was no longer just leaning towards the boutique, but slowly inching her way towards it with a strained expression, as if she were truly fighting the pull. I pursed my lips, looking politely past her at the elegant script of the sign, "Should we start there?"

"Only if you want to," Alice said cheerfully, already walking in that direction. I chuckled lowly and started to follow, Tanya keeping pace by my side. I should have trusted Alice, just getting me back with humans was slowly easing my fears. There were rules that applied here, and the structure soothed me.

A woman with a dark brown turtle neck sweater passed, with long, black, shiny hair. She had a very nice waist to hip ratio, but I felt not spark of interest. She spared me an appreciatory glance, but didn't slow down. I suppose she was pretty in a way that humans were, but I felt no need to bed her. Nothing about her _called_ to me.

I smiled, taking a deep breath of the human saturated air. There was a particular feeling of relief that accompanied my indifference towards the stranger. Alice might just have been right, this was good for me.

"So," Tanya started, distracting me from my pleasant thoughts. "What's our battle plan?"

"That depends. Who are we at war with?"

Tanya laughed, knocking her shoulder into mine playfully. I subtly put an extra few careful inches between us. "Women, I suppose. I thought we could walk around the block and see if any of them particularly appealed to you." Tanya had definitely been wrong: this was a terrible idea.

There was a very noticeable difference between the way I said _we_ and the way Tanya said _we._ I didn't like it. I gestured back at the woman with the fashionable sweater who was turning the corner without a look back at the beautiful strangers. She was happily, and newly, married. "But I've already…" I let that thought trail off, already hating the way it sounded before it was out of my mouth.

Tanya looked behind her, and I felt the disappointment in her that she wasn't blond. Specifically, that she wasn't strawberry blond, about five foot eight, one-hundred-twenty-five pounds, and gold-ish eyes with a vampire fetish.

"Why don't we go into the boutique? There must be women in there." I smiled placatingly. I was already reassured; I was only letting this carry on to convince _Tanya_ that I hadn't really changed. I was still the Edward that only enjoyed her company as a friend. And maybe I would feel a little more comfortable if Alice was there to act as a buffer.

She looked at the boutique. "No." '_There won't be enough diversity….the mall might have more people, but that's on the other side of town.'_

"Around the block then?"

She smiled brightly at me, "Sure."

I chuckled, "Tanya, you haven't changed a bit."

We hadn't been wandering long when the bars started to really open, groups of people walking in talking loudly with each other. There was an obvious difference between _them_, and Tanya and I. They seemed to easily integrate themselves into other people's small groups of friends while we seemed to be on the other side of a pane of glass. I was drawn into the minds of the barely matured adults, feeling the excitement of the anticipation of having fun, and winding down from their day. Most of them were coming from the local university.

I was also noticing that I was doing something unusual. I was looking at the women that passed in their groups. I was fearful for a moment before I realized I wasn't really looking at them. It wasn't at all my looking through them for something desirable, rather that I was looking _for_ someone. This was absolutely ridiculous. I _knew_ where Alice was: back at the boutique looking at the winter dress and sweater line.

I supposed she'd also pick me something up for the hospital benefit in a few weeks.

I expected to feel amused at her optimism; that I would be coming back soon enough to attend, but the idea wasn't at all unappealing. It seemed silly in this clear crisp air, surrounded by the dull concoction of scent that all these humans contributed to that I had been so seized by her scent. The idea was almost as ridiculous as the futile compulsion to search.

Which I was still doing.

I briefly met the eyes of a woman with clear skin and symmetrical features. One of the boys in the group of six clearly fancied her, but all I felt was a sense of disappointment. She looked away from me quickly. Her eyes were playful and at ease and she felt uncomfortable under my gaze. They were not at all sharp or shrewd in this moment.

It was the same routine over and over with different women. I would notice something about a woman that by all logical standards were attractive. Yet, all I felt looking at them was a throbbing sense of disappointment, like the consistent rhythmic ebb and flow of waves on the shore. The feeling would fade until I noticed something else and it would return as strongly as before to crash onto me again.

I felt suddenly ill as I realized what I was looking for. Shrewd eyes, a vivid contrast between their hair and skin, longer hair and petite stature. The silence. I felt my muscles tighten in stress as I understood I was expecting _her_, as if she would suddenly walk out from an alley or one of the clubs that dotted the streets in this section of town.

I had been seeing her face again, the questioning angle of her brow, the worried shape of her lips as she watched as I dressed in a flurry of shock and fear, so when a petite brunette _did_ walk out of a nearby alley just a few feet from us, I gave a yelp and jumped. If not for Tanya's quick reaction to my own incredibly bizarre response, I would have crashed into her. She shot me an irritated look.

Alice stood there with two shopping bags hanging from her arms, one on each wrist. She cocked an eyebrow at me. "You okay?" She had been just as started by my reaction as I had been by her appearance. I had been so completely caught up in my own thoughts I hadn't been paying attention to anyone else's.

I shook my head, clearing it of the unpleasantness, trying to regain the composure I'd had just moments before. "Yes. Are we done here?" I offered my arm, and Alice let me take the bags for her. She walked close to my side, taking her alley short cut back to the car. She chatted nonchalantly about the change in styles and that she had gotten a text from Jasper telling her he was going to hunt before school tomorrow so she wouldn't have to look for him. She thought this was a sweet gesture, but I knew she probably _would_ be looking for him anyways tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.

IIiInside her head was a different conversation. _'Edward, what's going on with you? You look like you're _ _waiting for someone to run out and jump you.'_

I glanced at Tanya, not purposely, not to single her out as my reason for my stress, it just happened to be a natural reaction to her words. Tanya was listening to Alice ramble, oblivious to our own private conversation.

Alice noticed the look and managed to rein in the sarcasm enough to avoid rolling her eyes and continue her public conversation without a hint of the underlying one. Alice could multitask. _'Well, obviously. Anyone else?'_

I hesitated. I was being ridiculous. Chime was all the way back in Chicago. There was no reason for her to be here.

So then why did I continue to search for her in the faces of these humans?

I looked at the rain battered red brick of the building to my right, and then to the left to the identical wall there. Alice understood I was shaking my head, but she was still doubtful. _'You'll tell me if something changes?'_

I looked up at the night sky, and then back to the way we were heading. She nodded to herself in response, understanding.

_'Edward looks like he's going to be leaving soon. He might not even stay long at the house. I have to talk to him now. But how do I get him alone...?'_ Tanya continued to struggle with herself. I didn't know what about. She had already turned the conversation she planned to have with me over in her head and moved on to the more practical aspects.

I was surprised to find she was right. I was ready to go home, to see my family again. I wanted to make Esme happy, and bring Alice home, and not be run off by some frail human girl who I would never see again anyways. I wanted to settle back into the comfort of my ersatz life. I wanted that last one most of all. I wanted to get rid of the face in my head, and feeling like I was waiting for her. Once I was back in my routine, I was sure it would all disappear, chased away by the predictability. The security of structure.

I stopped and some part of my mind waited for the feeling of something soft and warm to thump lightly into my back at the suddenness of it.Tanya stopped in time, and I felt the disappointment come over me again.

Ridiculous.

_"_Here, Alice, could you take these and bring the car around?" I handed her my keys and kept her bags as she continued on her way to the car. She wasn't at all surprised by the parting vision of us on our way home tonight.

I watched her disappear, keeping tabs on her whereabouts. Old habits die hard, and letting a woman walk around these streets at night—vampire or not—still made me nervous. Rosalie was the only exception to this rule for obvious reasons.

I leaned back against the wall, the rough brick edge catching onto the fabric of my sweater. Tanya started without hesitation. "How much did you hear?"

"The getting me alone part."

Tanya smiled a little, "You're going to have to be more specific."

Oh no. "The getting me alone to speakwith me," I said, my defences already starting to rise.

"Okay," Tanya said, and then, "I want you to stay with me." _'We could make each other happy.'_

I could see what she saw. That now that I had chosen the life of intimacy with humans, I practically _belonged_ with her family. In her eyes.

"Tanya—" I started, unwillingly. I hated these conversations. I always walked away feeling less than gentlemanly even if her attentions weren't exactly innocent.

"Edward," she cut me off quickly, "Kiss me." I stared at her blankly. "Just kiss me and then tell me no."

I ran my hand irritably through my hair."Don't, Tanya, please."

"You'll never know," she said, and then her eyes dropped to my lips and a hundred images all ran through her head at once, not all of them particularly focused on kissing. I winced.

Looking at her lips, too, I found they were beautiful, perfectly full and even, and a gorgeous shade of red. Absolutely flawless. These were very attractive lips, I told myself, just as the face they were set in was just as paradisiacal.

She looked up at me again, and the sky was reflected there, captured in her perpetual beauty. It was quite a sight. Any artist in the world would give their heart to only_ see_ this, to let her inspire them as their muse. A hundred symphonies would be composed in her honour. A thousand sculptures. Millions of paintings, all for this one single image.

I didn't feel it though. I could just as easily look up and see the sky as I could see it in her eyes. Nothing hindered me from seeing the original, so why settle for a duplicate? I closed my eyes, seeing neither now.

I tried to force all thoughts from my mind. I leaned down towards her, and she kept her eyes open, kept them on me. There was so little space between our faces; I was sure that it really wasn't much space at all if I were to measure it in miles, or feet, or even inches.

I could see my face moving towards her s slowly through her mind, and it felt so wrong. I felt I was being videotaped, like not just _I_ could see this, but the whole world. I was just waiting for the radio announcer to start the colour commentary.

Then, inexplicably, all I could think about was my ridiculously dented steering wheel. I had spent the whole ride up here waiting for when my fingers could slip into the grooves, a mould that was distinctly, and uniquely, mine.

I wasn't fitting here. I wasn't _me_ when I was doing this.

"This is wrong," I whispered. I could see my brows knit together through her eyes, and the way my lips moved. The sound they made brushing together.

_'It'll feel good later.'_ Tanya promised unthinkingly, leaning towards me now.

I pulled away instantly. All the shame that hadn't been with Chime was suddenly here. For the first time in decades, I felt truly _ill_. Tanya opened her eyes. "Edward?"

I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Tanya. You are, by far, the loveliest creature I have ever laid eyes on." I smiled at her glum expression. "You know it's true."

She laughed half-heartedly, looking away from me. "Thanks so much."

I gathered her into my arms instantly, resting my cheek on her head, sighing. "I can't, Tanya. I'm so sorry, but I can't. Not to you."

I felt her finally smile. "Not _to_ me, hmm? You know this provides the inconvenience of having to find another All American Boy."

I moved her away from me, keeping her at length so she could see my answering smile. "You will always be my favourite Russian." Alice was coming, her thoughts warning in case she was to intrude on the end of our 'moment'. I was ready to wave the white flag to _end _the moment.

"If you fall in love with another Russian, I warn you now, Edward, you will find my foot up your ass with no one to blame but yourself."

I threw my head back and laughed. Tanya smiled, and then looked sourly towards my silver Volvo that was slowly inching into view cautiously. I walked over, feeling the extra distance that Tanya put between us still stung from the rejection, and opened the door for her and then for Alice as she skipped around to graciously give up her passenger seat for Tanya. I nodded my thanks to her before stepping around into the driver's seat.

I turned us around, pulling away from the curb and towards home. _My _home.

My fingers settled comfortably into the ridges.

**A/N: Whoooo! I'm on twilighted (dot) net now. ^_^ I have the same pen name (teeny tiny twilight) and the story has the same title. I'll continue to update on here with this story, but it shall have no more sex. I'll edit it out. If you want the full, NC-17 version, go to twilighted. If you just want to see Edward and Bella hang out and have clean fun, stay here. :) I hope you all enjoy.**

**Oh, and if you don't know the drill by now, here it is. I drop off the face of the earth during the summer, but I'll be back in September. ^_^ **


	4. The First Virtue

Validation Beta: **Sunking**

**The First Virtue**

**Teeny Tiny Twilight**

I was staring at the pump's nozzle in my car, listening to the constant gurgle of gas as it _ch-glug_ed into my tank. I was also listening to Alice with a grin on my face.

She was watching for Jasper, seeing to each and every decision he made, right down to how he was going to sit when Alice first saw him when we pulled up the drive.

_Oh, Jasper,_ I thought sympathetically, and maybe with a hint of amusement, _if only you knew_. I suppose that's what you get for marrying a psychic though, especially one with photographic memory. If Alice didn't love us all so much, I'd be more concerned about blackmail.

Jasper had shifted from where he sat on the large white wraparound porch to the edge of the stairs so one leg dangle off casually, trying to look at ease. As if he wasn't nearly quivering in excitement to see my silver Volvo crunch its way up into view with the most important thing in his world sitting beside me.

I could feel Alice's adoration as she watched Jasper, every fibre of her being concentrated on the way his hair fell into his face as he moved. How could something so simple as that be enough to satisfy her attention? The whole of her attention riveted on simply the way he sat. Simply the fact that he was waiting for _her _was still just as startling, remarkable even as it had seemed to her so many years ago.

I felt a complexity of emotion while watching her blind eyes stare past time. A large part of me was amused by this. By how love could seep and spill into years, decades, centuries and still taste as fresh as the very first sight, their very first touch ringing eternal in her finger tips. It was delightfully entertaining to watch Emmett chase Rosalie with gestures of love, already knowing he had the prize; or to come home to find Carlisle and Esme dancing blissfully across the living room to the gentle rise and fall of Carlisle's voice gathering old symphonies and humming them quietly to her anew.

Alice watched as Jasper switched positions so he was lying on his side at the foot of the stairs, his arm propping his head up like a supermodel. I laughed aloud, and, as if hearing this, he quickly reverted to sitting more conventionally, his fist propping his chin up as he watched the edge of the driveway expectantly.

The nozzle clicked, trying to push my fingers away. I encouraged a few more chugs before replacing it in its cradle. I touched my back pocket, searching for the tell-tale bulge of my wallet.

Nothing.

I checked my other pockets mechanically, not really here anymore at all. Instead I was imagining a girl in a dark alley riffling through my wallet, her unusually deep eyes gleeful as she took out all the bills and pocketed them. Watched her debate shortly over the credit cards before tossing the remains on the ground. Watched someone find my ID.

The ensuing identity theft.

And when the perpetrator was caught, the police would come to inform me. They would track my name to find that I was still seventeen, maybe even younger depending on how soon we had started high school. I had my driver's licence in there. A photo and a date together to create an incriminating combination of identity.

If anyone found that...if they happened upon me later and found no difference between the man they saw in the picture, and the man they saw standing before them with all that time between the two...

Alice had been distracted by my slow growing horror as it collected on my face. How could I have possibly been so irresponsible? I had put us all at risk!

Quickly, an image started to trickled into her consciousness, slowly soaking her mind until it enveloped her.

Alice could always think through her visions, of course, but they blinded her, replacing the present with the future. No matter how many times it happened to her, it was always disconcerting to lose a major sense. Depending on what she saw, it could be downright frightening.

This was completely different from calling visions onto herself. When she chased them down and pulled them over her eyes, it was like playing with an old blanket. You already knew before you pulled it over your face what you would find underneath.

It was times like these in the beginnings of her visions when the initial shock and then the distress began, just like the very first time she had experienced it. It was the initial fear as she lost sight, the sudden feeling of vulnerability that accompanied the blindness, and then the Images that followed. I felt suddenly grateful that though my _gift_ ran all the time, it never took from me as Alice's took from her.

This time, I experienced horror as well.

I stared at Alice as she resurfaced into the present, me with eyes aghast with disbelief, Alice with a curious look. "Hmm," she murmured, contemplating my motives.

"I need to hunt." I muttered unhappily. Alice nodded, and I jogged across the road from the gas station, pushing through the first layer of thin trees with grabbing branches. _Stay_, I could feel the blood thirsty monster within me purr, _you don't want this. You want her._

I narrowed my eyes and shoved through one unlucky grabbing tree, snapping its thin trunk with excessive force. _Yes_,I agreed, but I knew that for as much as I wanted her, there was only one thing I wanted more.

To be human again.

To never feel the thirst turn my mind to gruesome images. To never again feel my body prepare for an attack that I hadn't even considered yet. I never ever wanted to feel more animal than man ever again. The instant gratification of her blood on my tongue would only drag me further from the thing I wanted most.

With that, I ran. I ran until I caught the scent of deer and then as I got closer, the fresh earth they had turned up in their passing.

I knew even before my teeth sank into the deer's throat that this animal's blood would taste more terrible than usual, and yet more impossibly sweet with premeditated victory than I had ever tasted.

Knew it, because the last thing I saw before leaping at the startled animal was the questioning shape of her eyes.

For every yellow line that I passed, each one bringing me closer to home, I was struck with another thought of her. The girl was scattered across my mind like shards of a shattered mirror. One thought would shine like a beam of light through my attention, catching the glass, and throwing it into a million different directions.

Part of this was Alice's fault.

Most of it was mine.

I had come back to find that Alice had pulled into a parking space to free up the gas tank, sitting with her knees propped up on my dashboard and staring contemplatively out the windshield at the dirty gas station. It seemed what while I had been chasing down the unappetizing animals, and drinking their slightly more appetizing blood, Alice had come up with a few theories.

"I'm going so I can retrieve my wallet." I told her sternly before she could test any of her theories. Some of them quite ridiculous, while others seemed quite disconcertingly plausible.

One being curiosity.

It hadn't been something I could have afforded myself to concentrate much on then, but the mystery of her mind _did_ admittedly pique me. I had never had to _try _to hear another's thoughts. They usually imposed themselves onto my mind with the force of a great gushing river, breaking past any barrier that I attempted to construct against them.

I could only partially ignore the thoughts, but the moment someone thought my name, or anything of even meagre interest, their voice would roar through my consciousness.

Not hers. How curious.

_No._ It was _not _curious. I wouldn't allow it to become curious. She was simply human, nothing more, and nothing less. Perhaps I couldn't read her mind because she had smelt so _good_. I was too distracted to find the roundabout way that I needed to use to infiltrate her mind. It had never happened before, but there was a first time for everything. And when I did break into her mind, I would be disappointed. There really was not point in trying to understand her at all. It was an absolute waste of my time.

"Oh," Alice said, and then she understood with a great amount of relief. "So it wasn't blood lust?"

_Why do you care?_ I thought angrily, but of course she would care. A slip of that magnitude would put her in danger of exposure too.

I was being absolutely selfish. Maybe I did need to get my wallet back, but I also knew that a large part of it was pride. I had run from her once, so delicate and weak, now I wanted to return, to reclaim my security. She was merely a human with an appetizing scent. I would have the strength this time. I was prepared.

Alice decided that I had been suffering in my own mind long enough. She welcomed me into hers.

"He's waiting for me on the stairs," she said, smiling as she saw that she had indeed distracted me. "He's considering plans to welcome me home. As of now, it's a midnight stroll on the beach." Her smile brightened at the thought, the stars, the moon. The night was always a point of romance and nostalgia for both Alice and Jasper. They had spent so much time travelling to find us through the nights, hiding together during the day in between.

Alice could already see the way that the light of the moon would make the pale sand glow from her memories of similar nights with Jasper. She loved the ocean the most.

"Oh," I said thoughtlessly, looking up at the waning night. "It might have to be an early morning stroll, I doubt we'll make it home before midnight."

Alice looked at me and blinked once, and then disappeared into her vision. We both watched how the sun would stain the sky into brighter shades of blue, chasing away the stars just as they both walked out onto the beach, hand in hand.

"Oh." She said, disappointed. Visibly deflated, she turned away from me.

I was horrified with myself. I hadn't meant to hurt her, I was only being realistic. Thoughtlessly speaking without even considering that I might offend her. God, no wonder I was alone.

"But," I continued quickly, scanning the stars again, this time for something to brighten Alice again. "You will definitely make the sun rise. Which is so much more beautiful than the moon. More romantic."

I was grasping at straws, but Alice was bright again. "You're right. I mean, the moon sticks around all night, but the sunrise...it's so fleeting. If you don't grab onto it right, away it's gone."

I grinned at her, pleased that I had finally done _something _right.

I dropped Alice off at the house. Jasper was waiting in apparent leisure, hands behind him to support his torso as if he had been watching the sky. As if he hadn't been on guard all night at the foot of the driveway, waiting for the slightest sound on the highway to announce our approach, getting excited every time a car passed.

Emmett was bouncing around inside the house as if he'd drunk a whole pot of coffee to himself.

Rather than skip right to Jasper, as I saw that Alice had initially intended, she skipped off into the woods, towards the beach, knowing that Jasper would be right behind her.

Jasper followed after her with a grin. '_Should have known,'_ he thought with amusement. His happiness at her return was enough to outweigh the disappointment that his surprise had been ruined. After all these years, Jasper was the only one who continued to try and surprise Alice.

I pulled in a deep breath, not catching even a whiff of the girl anymore. The leather was almost fresh smelling, the carpeting and the fabric on the roof had finally relinquished her memory in favour of Alice's, whose scent was now as strong as mine, masking hers entirely.

I couldn't celebrate this as I turned around in the driveway.

I was off to revive the girl's slow smouldering fires.

I didn't know what I expected to find.

Did I honestly think that she would run out at me from one of the dark alleys between the crumbling buildings like a diseased, wild thing?

And then I laughed because I realized, on some level, I was _scared_ of the slight girl who had nothing. No power or strength, no speed or even _luck. _

Definitely no luck.

I chuckled again, watching the sky carefully. No sun would break through the clouds today as Alice had assured me. Just the same, I couldn't help but want to find her in the dark, least I somehow drag her out into my daylight world where I was no more human than her.

As silly as it was, I was sure that if I only saw her in the night, she would never become _real_. Like monsters that hid in the dark corners of a child's room, disappearing with the morning light. She seemed to be my own personal demon. The monster that hid in my night.

If I escaped her before the morning, I was sure I could escape her for good.

The sky was choked with thick grey clouds that drank in the night's gloom. They seemed much less happy than I was with the turn this day had taken.

Actually, I realized with a start that I felt a slight degree of pleasant anticipation to see her again. Fear, also, but mostly just a giddy excitement.

What was wrong with me? I was acting like a child with a new toy. Was I really so inane as to be amused by such simple things? I hoped not, I imagined myself to carry at least some degree of depth to my character. Just flash something shiny and my attention was caught. How pathetic.

I had the feeling that this was all terribly off, as if I had struck a key wrong in the middle of a smooth composition...though my life had been anything but smooth. I had never spent much time considering the kind of woman I would fall for, but I had a general idea of what she would be. Intelligent, refined, well read with an easy humour and perhaps even a touch of expensive taste; enough to enjoy the merits of wealthy living.

And then I went and fucked a prostitute.

I believe my standards have lowered.

I wasn't sure exactly where I should go to find her, but if Alice had seen me finding her, then my searching must eventually be fruitful.

I wasn't paying much attention to where I was going, too lost in thought to be paying much attention to the roads. I was startled when I suddenly recognized my surroundings. The alarming Déja vu as I caught the underlying structure of home through the disease that plagued it with the 21st Century. It was like walking past home after the devastation of war.

I hated this place even before I saw the familiar night club/bar/hang out for whores. It was long closed by now, the lights turned off and the neon _open_ sign hanging lifelessly in the barred windows. Just up the street though, there was a bus stop.

There was no cover, only a bench with a girl sitting there, a back-pack beside her.

If I'd had a heart to race, it would be slamming against my ribs. I could tell it was her even though she wore the casual attire that typical people wore: jeans, a sweater, practical running shoes with her hair up in a pony-tail rather than hanging down around her shoulders. There was also a large brown back pack resting beside her on the graffiti laden bench.

Was she running away, or did she actually go to school?

And then a more terrifying thought hit me. God, how old was she? She looked about my age, but she might just have matured early. What if she was sixteen? Fifteen? Jesus, I've seen thirteen-year-old's who could pass for seventeen. Maybe she _did_ go to school. Oh god, I had sex with a thirteen-year-old.

The giddiness twisted sickly in my stomach and turned into nauseousness.

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. I wish I could drink and become inebriated, to simply drink until I forgot and passed out in an unconscious heap on the floor. I wanted to completely wipe this from my memory.

It wasn't helping at all that the girl—whose _name_ I didn't even know—was kicking her feet and staring at my slow approaching car with curiosity. I suddenly saw it as a child's curiosity.

I pulled up against the curb beside the bench morosely and let the car idle. I wanted to slide right out of my seat and through the floor, through all the many layers of earth, then bedrock, and then finally disappear into the magma in the earth, finally meeting my fiery fate.

I settled for slouching.

The girl stood up off the bench and walked over to the car. Her eyes had sharpened to spear points, and her face was grim. I couldn't even celebrate in the fact that I had stopped searching. The relentless need to do so had dissipated in her presence.

She stopped outside my passenger side door and waited. I sighed—one last clean breath of air—and leaned across the seat to open the door for her.

"It's open." I said simply as the door swung ajar.

She opened it up wider. "I was actually waiting for you to roll the window down, but thanks." She reached into her hoodie pouch and produced—miracle of miracles—my wallet.

My whole day brightened immediately. There was to be no searching through dingy alleyways today for the remaining scraps of my ID. My good mood was also due to the fact that I hadn't taken a breath since she had opened the door. My throat felt fine and cool.

I smiled carefully at the girl, making sure that no deadly, too white, razor sharp teeth peeked through my lips at her. It felt like such an awkward expression with my lips plastered tightly against my teeth when all I wanted to do was beam at her.

"Thank you." I murmured in a kind, quiet voice that I used to ease humans.

It had the opposite affect on her though. She became suddenly guarded, as if I had bared my teeth at her like a hungry animal; which wasn't too far off the mark.

It was all so clear on her deceptively open face, though her mind remained shut to my prying. The way her expression changed to surprise and then the tightening of her shoulders as her guard rose. There was a small little wrinkle between her brows that suggested unease, worry at my perfectly rational response to her kindness.

It was all so clear, and yet, I didn't understand.

"No problem." She shot sideways as if my words had a second, more sinister meaning, tossing me my wallet with a casual flick of her wrist. It was—again—such an unusual response for my perfectly natural words. I reached up to touch my face self-consciously, wondering if there was something offensive there.

Beyond the confusion, I was a little hurt. I had been absolutely genuine in my gratitude. I wasn't sure where the insult came from, since I was the last person anyone _should _trust. I lied to humans all the time. I lied to humans by simply walking into a class room, let alone all the stories we told. _Oh, my parents died when I was young. Yes, I was adopted at eight. Only Alice is my biological sister... _so on so forth.

It took me a long moment to realize where my irrational pique stemmed from. This mistrustful sideways look she had thrown me was derived from a past of offences. She wasn't used to "thank you's". Considering her occupation, she probably wasn't used to kindness in any of its forms. Oddly, this really bothered me. It bothered me more than it should.

I had considered all this before the wallet struck the palm of my mechanically positioned hand and my fingers closed around the warm leather instinctively. _Warm_ leather because she was very, very warm. Very much _alive._ I forced myself to remember this.

She was alive, and this was good.

I would make it my mantra if it was necessary.

A strange kind of protectiveness welled up in me for this troublesome girl. I hoped that after I had disappeared from her life, and I _would_ disappear, her luck would change for the better. Maybe she would find a more ethically friendly occupation, or her parents would find her. I realized that my well wishing was the greatest kindness I could offer, and that bothered me more than the look.

And what was worse, her silence was both entirely, imperceptibly weightless as I couldn't even detect it, and unbelievably conspicuously heavy as I couldn't stop thinking about it, lingering just beyond the passenger side door. It was the most irritating thing about all this, beyond even my helplessness.

I was very aware of the safe air left in my lungs as I leaned over and smiled again, trying to become as aesthetically pleasing to her as possible. Widened eyes, my head tilted down slightly in a sign of submissiveness, kind, polite smile...and no teeth. What wasn't to like about the volatile vampire?

"How old are you?" I asked as sweetly as possible.

She sucked in a quick breath as if I had told her I stepped on a nail this morning. It was the sound of sympathetic pain. "You really want to ask that?"

"Yes." Did she find my question rude? Had I actually offended her and if I had, how deeply? I instinctively probed at her silence and found nothing. It was like she didn't even exist, though she stood but feet from me.

She was close enough for me to reach over and touch her...but I wouldn't. It would be dangerous and foolish and just plain stupid and irresponsible on my part. I had done enough damage.

Or had I? She seemed incredibly placid for someone who had seen something very strange. Did she even remember it? Maybe she had already explained away my sudden appearance at my car. Explained it as something normal, and then, as humans so easily do, she forgot about it.

Humans liked what they understood. It wouldn't be the first time the self preservation mechanism to make sense of unusual things had worked in my favour. The apparent safety in the common and everyday put humans at ease in ways that the actual truth of a situation never could.

I wasn't sure how she had warped the scene she had witnessed to force it into the strict confines of normalcy. The darkness had played tricks on her eyes? I had found a different exit from hers? I wouldn't know. She stood staring at me with those sharp eyes that seemed to show an incredible depth into her, and yet were so dark that the secrets that swam tauntingly just below the surface were thrown into absolute shadow. Absolutely impossible to read, and yet, somehow, I felt as if I was part of that opaque darkness. So close that I could almost just lean forward and touch—

_Stop_.

I shut my eyes tightly. What was I doing? I needed to stop trying to decipher her eyes. Granted, her mind was an anomaly, and yes, such was unusual enough to garner interest, but I would not _be_ interested. I had already decided this. She was human, and humans had a tendency to think in such similar ways that hearing one was just as well as hearing them all.

Besides, the disappointment in expending so much interest and energy in cracking into her mind, just to uncover the same mindless, self-absorbed chatter that filled the rest of the population would be a far greater blow than simply walking away from a curious situation. It would be a waste of my time to even watch the slight changes in her expression. She obviously hadn't tortured herself as I had from our previous encounter, so why should I continue to worry?

I would simply disappear as a strange rich fool who threw his wallet around for a laugh.

I refused to care anymore. Even if she was young, what was done was done with apparently no damage done.Why bother? Why worry? It was over.

What I wouldn't give to actually be able to believe that.

Chime was silent, watching me with a troubled expression. Finally, she sighed. "Do me a favour Edward, and I'll tell you what you want."

"A favour?" I started, unsure. Her silent mind was becoming more and more troublesome, rather than more bearable as time passed.

And then I realized she said my name.

I had never told her my name.

"How—" And then I looked down at the wallet that was still in my hands. My ID. My name, my age, my birthday, even when my licence was up for renewal.

A cool sinking feeling started in my stomach.

Not good.

_Chime_ cocked her eyebrow at me with a small knowing smile. She was well aware of my realization as she produced my ID from her back pocket. "A favour?" she repeated as I stared at her in shock that slowly dissolved into anger.

I glared blackly at her. "What?" I asked sharply, not making any promises. I was already planning how I would get out of the car. I could easily run her down without even breaking my human facade. Her legs, while long for her body, were short in comparison to my stature. Then it would be an easy task to simply pluck my ID from her fingers. All she was doing was inconveniencing me, and putting herself in danger.

Stupid girl.

Chime seemed absolutely unfazed by my anger. She was even so bold as to sit down in the car with me. I tried very hard not to think about how her scent was soaking into the leather through her jeans, how it would permeate through her sweater and into the air. Even with the door open, her scent would be nearly lethal. Simply taking a breath would cause me to combust into flames.

"I never want to see you again." She said simply, and then flicked my driver's licence at me before I had even a chance to get over the new shock of her words, let alone agree.

I realized as my hand automatically rose to catch the thin slip of plastic that she never meant to blackmail me with the ID. It was simply to get my attention, and I had to applaud her technique grudgingly. She had my undivided attention.

"_Why_?" I gasped. Not that I was ever planning to return to her, or any of her friends, but I was impossibly curious. Maybe what she had seen in the parking lot _had_ affected her. Maybe she remembered.

Maybe she had theories.

A strand of hair had fallen out of her pony tail and into her face. She blew it out of her face in an irritated way that both interested and amused me. Why not just move it? I caught my hand just as I moved to tuck it behind her ear myself.

_Stupid._ There was no 'you break it, you buy it' policy here. Once she was broken, there was no way to compensate for her absence.

"Because, Edward," she said shortly, "I have seen too many kids like you get messed up by hanging around with the wrong crowd," she gestured to herself.

_Kid? _Did she just call me a child? I was older than her grandfather.

I cocked my head at her. "You're the wrong crowd?" Was she seriously trying to tell me she posed a danger to me? That was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. Even more so than her implication that I was too juvenile for her life style.

Chime watched me sadly. "I'm not good, Edward. I could destroy your future by just being around you."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She had already taken _my_ lines. _No_, I wanted to argue, I'm_ not good for _you. _I could take your future from you by simply breathing at an inopportune time. Like any time around you._

What was I supposed to say to that? I felt very much speechless.

"Just promise me you'll stay away? That you won't do this again?" She stared at me, and I was suddenly lost in her face. There was such a depth of emotion to her face. Not just her eyes which seemed to see right through me, right into me, into my past but the whole of her face right down to the way she held her mouth. I imagined she saw each of my regrets as easily as I saw the concerned lines between her brows, gathered into a small 'V'.

For that one moment, I was at ease. Terrified by the newness, the strangeness of this sudden comfort, but strangely at ease despite it.

"I promise."

Her eyes closed and her head dropped forward slightly in relief. I felt a sudden, urgent bloom of intimacy in the gesture. The strange misplaced trust on her part to feel that she could rely not only on my words, but the safety she seemed to feel this close to me. And then, to make herself more vulnerable still by closing her eyes.

I tried to think back to when there was ever a human that was at this proximity and still at ease. Or even this close to me at their own freewill, at ease or not. I couldn't remember any.

She opened her eyes then, and smiled at me. Thankful, though she didn't thank me. I didn't need to read her mind to hear the gratitude. It was there in her face, the small smile on her face that pulled at the corners of _my_ mouth.

Suddenly giddy, I smiled back at her. My teeth slipped past my tight lips into a generous smile. Happy. I felt happy. I liked pleasing her, this stranger whom I didn't know at all. Not even her age.

She hadn't told me.

She stood up, getting out of the car. I had about enough air to ask this, and maybe a few small words, and then my oxygen was gone. Before I could though, she turned. She looked unwilling, as if giving me this small amount of information pained her.

"I'm seventeen."

I relaxed.

She smiled kindly then, "And I like your contacts."

My brow furrowed in confusion. "I didn't get contacts."

"Oh," now she was the one who looked confused. "Your eyes changed."

I went rigid with stress.

She walked away from the car, the door closing behind her with a very loud bang to my suddenly keen ears. Just like that, she left me again in a state of devastation. Of horror.

Another slip. Not a large one. Not like the last one, but it was a slip all the same. I hadn't even been with her for a full five minutes this time.

Humans should be too nervous around me to even note the colour of my eyes to begin with. The humans at my school that had known me for years still confused the colour of my eyes. Jessica Stanley had even imagined me with blue eyes in one of her many fantasies.

Laughable.

Yet this strangely observant girl had not only remembered the colour of my eyes from our last short meeting in the dark, but knew the exact shade a week later well enough to confidently make a comment about the change.

What else had she remembered with such accuracy?

My hand thoughtlessly rose and turned the time sensitive light off in my car, still lingering, as if waiting for her return. I realized I was hoping that I could hide in the darkness, as if by simply being unseen, I could erase what she could see.

I needed a distraction, even if just a small one. I opened my wallet with much more concentration than was needed, checking to make sure I had all of my other meaningless slips of plastic. My credit cards, the average one that I used regularly, and the sleek black one that I used when we needed to conceal ourselves. My student card, my bank card, and others.

No pictures but my photo ID's. No receipts. Nothing personal enough to link me to anyone or anywhere. All my personal pictures and things were either in a safe that held the last of my parents' belongings or in my room.

As I slid my driver's licence into the clear plastic sheath in the forefront of my wallet, I saw with a shock that there was money in my wallet. I pulled it all out.

There seemed to be more here than before. That couldn't be right though, could it? I counted it quickly and found that there was an extra three bills in here than before. And yet there was One-hundred-and-twenty dollars missing.

I frowned and counted it again, not understanding and then it struck me as I hit the four extra twenties.

I hadn't had twenties in here before. It had only been hundreds and two one-thousands. I had planned to break some of the hundreds while on my little excursion the night I met Chime.

My head snapped up towards the bench.

Her charge. She had gone and broken one of my hundreds to get her charge. I stared at her as a light started to rise around her.

Why? Wouldn't it have been less troublesome to just take two hundreds? I couldn't imagine she would have easily found a place in this neighbourhood that would trustingly take hundreds. Why not just strip my whole wallet of cash? It wouldn't have been less than I deserved for how I had treated her. Karma dictated that I should come back to find my wallet empty.

I kept tumbling over questions without a hope of an answer when I became horrified.

I was staring at the bench where Chime sat again with her back-pack without meaning to. Now my eyes drifted past her with a sinking feeling to the horizon where the clouds that had before been saturated with the night were now aflame with the sun.

I had dragged her out into the day.

She turned then, as if just realizing that I was still there, feeling my gaze on her. I couldn't see her features, the light had risen directly behind her, so I was perfectly visible in the dark corner of my car while she was veiled in light.

She raised a hand and waved.

I pretended not to see, pulling away from the curb instead. _Goodbye_, I thought. _Goodbye and good luck._

I turned illegally on the street and started for home.

The light chased me all the way there.


	5. The Loophole

**The loophole**

**Teeny tiny twilight**

I had my firsts pressed against my lips, my elbows leaning against the cafeteria table. I stared past Emmett who had, by this point, given up trying to ease my fraying nerves. Somehow, his 'what's going to happen, is going to happen' attitude wasn't reassuring.

Mostly, because part of me _wanted_ something to happen.

I had come to school today, for more than to simply keep up appearances. I was easing myself back into my public life which I had disappeared from so suddenly last week. I couldn't believe that it had only been a week. One week since I had sat in this chair, board beyond my mind in this simple building.

Last week my facade hadn't meant much more than the responsibilities that being in our family held. Now I felt imprisoned. Caged.

Micheal Newton was out in the hall, his voice trying to persuade the new girl to come in, to join their merry gang of mediocre, inane children. "Why don't you just come sit with us. I mean, the caf chairs aren't exactly comfortable, but it has to be better than the floor."

When we had all arrived today at school, the minds of the small student body were buzzing with images. A face, a new arrival who had come in her first day on Tuesday. Apparently she missed Monday because she couldn't get certain documents in on time. Or her dog died or something. I wasn't sure. I didn't care.

Well no, that isn't exactly true. I hadn't cared when the new girl's face was strewn through the muddy memories of the humans. Unclear, and indistinct after a weekend of not seeing her face to re-freshen the memory. Large eyes, full lips, longer brown hair. Some people remembered the widow's peak that framed her face, giving it the romanticized likeness of a valentines day heart. Others were caught by how straight her nose was, a little too thin for her face.

Micheal remembered her lips.

He was looking at them now, trying not to be too obvious about it. He liked the way they were shaped, the upper lip too full so that it perfectly matched her bottom lip. On most people's faces, the upper lip was less full than the bottom. It looked so strange. Eye catching.

Mesmerizing.

How was it that I hadn't once given the bus stop across from the school a second glance? In all the years that I had been attending this school. Of all the times that I drove past it—that I looked right _at_ it—I hadn't once given Chime sitting at the bus stop bench this morning a second look.

My hands slid up and into my hair with a groan. _Stupid, stupid,_ stupid _vampire._

"No thanks, Mike." Her voice rang quiet and clear above the babble of the cafeteria, though she was the farthest from us. It was probably just because I was listening for it, rather than it possessed an unique quality to make it sing above the rest. "I just want to eat alone." She smiled at him, it was small, but it was a truly touched smile. As if he had done some remarkable thing for her by simply inviting her into his little group of friends.

Micheal grinned stupidly in response to her smile. _'God, she's so pretty. And funny. What was Ben saying about her before? Something about being open or something about her humour...'_

I was suddenly angry, and for no reason that I could see, I wanted to take it out on Newton. Violently. Why didn't he just leave her be? I didn't _want_ her to come into the cafeteria, didn't want to chance a stray wind that would blow her scent anywhere near me.

I was also as perplexed as the boy. Why did she prefer the floor? Did she not _like_ the company that Micheal ran with? I mean, I didn't either, but I had certain prejudices against mindless sheep. It couldn't be that she didn't like the _boy_; she was making _that_ obvious.

I glared at the wall, even angrier _because_ this shouldn't bother me at all. Plenty of girls liked the Newton boy. He was a very generic blond boy with blue eyes and clear skin. Pale, but so was everyone else.

Jessica was currently waiting for him to come to the table so she could tell him about the new movie she had heard was coming into theatres on the weekend. A sappy love story that Lauren had gushed had been so moving she had cried when the two lovers were reunited. Jessica was hoping that bringing it up would cause Mike to ask her to go see it with him.

Jessica's crush on the boy didn't bother me in the least. Quite the opposite, since her annoying little fantasies had moved on from me. If there was one thing that I could attribute to her, it was that she could be quite thorough.

I shuddered.

"Please?" Mike wheedled, "I promise we wont bite."

I will.

Chime—but his next words shocked me, and then gave me an intense pleasure. _Victory_.

"Annabel," he looked at her darkly, "If you don't come in, we'll all come out."

_Annabel—_I knew her name now. I felt a swell of pride, like I had won though she still knew more of me than I did of her. So if knowledge was the name of the game, then I was still a few points behind her. I shouldn't be celebrating.

I grinned despite this.

Annabel blanched. "You wouldn't."

she was right. He wouldn't actually go in there and up root the whole table for the girl. It would put him out there too much, and he didn't want to let her know _exactly_ how much he liked her. If she turned him down he could still go back to his friends and say he was never actually interested in her. Save face.

Pathetic.

I nearly snorted. I was about to comment on his cowardice aloud to Emmett, when I realized that this was all just trivial human drama.

We all had heard this and then some. There was nothing new about an unrequited crush—or maybe a requited crush with some crossed wires—no one _cared_. Least of all me who had a second window into the lives of the humans. It was a double dose of tedium that I held in absolute contempt.

So why _did_ I care—and I obviously did—about the tedium that I had previously gone out of my way to _ignore?_ I felt very much absorbed by this little drama when I could read their lines to them, as if from a well revised script, I knew this dance so well.

Maybe I had created an illusory claim on the girl because I had met her first. Or was it some symptom of sex? Humans staked claims on their conquests until their attentions started to wander. Maybe this was something similar. A kind of shock wave of her presence that would continue to echo for a week or so.

I sighed, scrubbing at my face with my hands. Alice shot me another apologetic look. _'Sorry. I would have warned you, but the new girl never tangled herself with the others futures, and yours was so twisted I could barely catch a sneeze.'_

I shrugged. "I would have had to face it eventually." I mumbled.

Emmett grinned, thinking I was starting to take his go-with-the-flow attitude.

I was very much fighting the flow. The girl seemed to keep getting flung at me, as if someone _wanted_ me to kill her.

I wouldn't.

The red eyed demon laughed at me from inside my own head.

Or I would I try very _very _hard not to.

Micheal was walking into the cafeteria now, looking disappointed. I'd missed how their conversation had ended, but Annabel had obviously won the round. Somehow, I wasn't particularly surprised. I wanted to ask my brothers to see if they usually had these conversations out in the halls at the beginnings of lunch.

Then I remembered I didn't care and started to pick my granola bar apart instead.

Jasper threw a sideways glance at me. He was well fed, his eyes as light as mine. He was smug, but trying very hard not to be. He was happy that, for once, he wasn't the weakest link. They were all hovering protectively over _me _now. _'How you faring, Edward?'_

"Fine." I said, refusing to look at the door. I wouldn't see anything anyways, the window with the wire mesh through it only showed the old grey-blue lockers that lined the main hall. Annabel was sitting, too low for me to see.

He smirked a little. _'Frustrating, isn't it?'_

_More than you will ever know, Jasper. _I glared at him, though he was absolutely right and quite entitled to his smugness.

I could see Alice running my immediate future through her mind over and over, looking for potential disasters. Because _I_ was the liability now. Emmett was across from me, between me and the door, acting like a body guard of sorts, as if the girl posed a risk to my physical well being.

I remembered the drowning, how she seemed to submerge me by simply touching me, and I figured that wasn't so far from the truth.

I hadn't told the others about the alarming response I had to the girl. That just seemed too much. The blood lust, that I had slept with her, that I couldn't even read her mind...I wondered if I even had any dignity left to _salvage_.

But I saw her today. I met with her alone, no witnesses, and I hadn't tried to kill her. I hadn't attempted to harm her in any way. Wasn't that progress? Didn't that display some degree of strength on my part?

_But you never breathed once. How could you have resisted temptation when there was never any lure? _Was I honestly dragged down to this? Trying to recover bits of what I had been so sure I _was _just days before? I was trying to discover strength where there was none.

And here I was calling _Newton_ a coward. I might as well have been running from a growling kitten. I had imagined danger where there was none just because she had managed to surprise me. In quite a few ways.

I wonder what the girl thought when I had flown out of the hotel room like a bat out of hell. She probably thought I was ridiculous. Maybe that was why she hadn't been scared. I had come off as such a coward she didn't even bother with fear, because she didn't think me able to inspire it.

None of these thoughts were helping my mood.

_'Edward?' _Alice asked, still guilty for having missed the obvious. She hadn't even known what Chime/Annabel looked like until this morning. She hadn't even linked the new girl in my biology class to the woman I had met last week.

I flicked my eyes up at her, waiting. I didn't even make the pretence of being curious. How could the girl spiral me into such a terrible mood by simply _being_ here?

She bowed her head a little. _'Sorry.' _ she thought, and at first I thought it was for missing the significance of the girl, but then she spoke aloud. "Are you going to skip next period?"

Oh. I see. She was apologizing because she was putting a decision that was ultimately mine up for debate. Fantastic.

I listened to everyone's initial reactions. Each one was an absolute negative.

Except for Emmett. "Just get it over with, Edward. She's alone in the hall right now. We could cover for you."

Before I could voice my protest, Rosalie groaned at Emmett. "I don't want to move yet. We are almost finished school, Em. _Finally._"

Emmett shrugged, spinning his fork in his spaghetti. He would move for me, if something happened.

Jasper tried not to sound too self-righteous when he said, "Why chance it? Just skip today, and take it slow."

While Jasper really did feel bad for me, terribly empathetic for the situation I was tangled in, some part of him was pleased that I had met Chime. He was so tried of being the weak one. I couldn't even be irritated at his thoughts. I knew that I would gladly trade Jasper's suffering for my own if that meant I could return to last week when I had been practically _radiating _self assurance.

I wasn't self assured now. I was anxious, and angry and almost hopeful that I could make it through today and still be able to look Carlisle square in the eye tonight.

"I was alone with her today, and nothing happened." I argued, with obvious flaw.

Rose raised an eyebrow. "You said you didn't breath this morning."

"I wont breath now." I said quietly as a girl passed by our table jubilantly, pony tail swinging as she rushed to her friends laughing about some boy who had approached her in the lunch line.

"...so out of his league." I heard them laugh four tables up from us. I grimaced. _This_ gossip was absolutely impossible. Mind numbing. But wasn't it ultimately the same kind of drama that had gone on in the hall just moments ago?

I looked over at a sulking Micheal, picking at his food while Jessica tugged at his sleeve, laughing. She was desperate for his attention, and he didn't even realize her infatuation with him, so lost in his own pinning.

I wonder if Annabel noticed his obvious yearning, or if she was just as blatantly unobservant as he was. I didn't think that was likely, as she was very good at picking up on such small details. Yet she had forgotten about my hasty escape. Maybe she had gotten lucky this morning with the eyes.

Cynically, I doubted it.

Maybe I would ask her. This idea brightened my thoughts considerably. I needed to make some kind of small talk with her anyways, my table was the only empty one, the only place with a free seat. Besides, I needed to leave her with a better impression than I had today. I hadn't expected that I would meet with her again, so I hadn't been trying all that hard to come off as _normal_.

I needed to be polite if she was going to share the lab desk with me. Maybe not for long as Mr. Bertie was lax on seating arrangements. He prided himself on his memory, of being able to remember names without needing the structure of arranged seating to aid him. It wouldn't be long before she found another lab partner she would rather share her class with.

In the mean time she was stuck with me. I grinned a little as I tried to image how she would react to seeing me. I tried to imagine the expression in her clear eyes as she realized that I now new almost as much about her as she did me. Maybe not her birthday, but definitely her name. That was the important one anyways.

I couldn't read her mind, but her eyes were very open. I could read _those_ instead. Like a puzzle I could slowly begin to piece together. A certain expression must expose a certain thought. I was—for once—suddenly impatient for class to begin.

"Huh," Alice said, shaking me from my thoughts. "It's more secure now." She cocked her head at me questioningly, trying to understand what had brought the barely even chances of her surviving up to an almost concrete ninety-three percent surety.

Curiosity? Would curiosity really be enough to save her?

I remembered that first night, how she had touched me and suddenly the thirst was all but gone. It wasn't so much curiosity, as _distraction_ that seemed to keep the thirst in check. Before it had been her body, maybe now her mind would be enough. Enough to keep the monster in line, strictly shackled to my will.

Like reflexology; sending different nerve impulses up the same nerve to ease a pain with pleasure. The self preservation technique of understanding every situation to cut the vulnerability factor of being taken off guard might what would save _her. _Though a vampire's mind was able to concentrate on much more than one thing at once, something new, something _distracting _was usually enough to entertain the mind until it was riddled out.

The girl was most definitely distracting.

I was excited to test the theory. As if her life was nothing more than an experiment. I flinched. But wouldn't I have to go eventually? Why not go early? Get seated and ready, put my props on display?

She was in the hall, I could test my theory _now _when, unlike in the classroom, I had an easy escape if her scent did become too much. Then I would know whether or not to skip or not_._

I hesitated. I wasn't sure my eagerness to see her wasn't purely for the sake of the experiment. Besides, she wasn't a science project. It wasn't like she was renewable; if the test failed, I wouldn't find another Chime.

Not Chime, I remembered with a sense of giddy anticipation, _Annabel_.

I squashed the excitement down. I would at least wait until fifteen minutes before class. That was more than reasonable.

I waited. I watched until the second hand finished it slow rotation on the clock face. The exact moment that the second hand hit the twelve, I stood up. Everyone at the table looked up at me questioningly.

"I'm going to class." I said casually, as if I left at this time everyday. I was embarrassed to admit the slight interest I had in the girl. Along with all my other slips in the past few days, I could imagine how easily they would all misinterpret my intentions, guessing at some darker motivation.

And to think that just this morning I had sworn that I wouldn't let any part of her garner interest for me. But I had made that promise to myself when I had been sure that this morning would be the last I ever saw of her.

There was an obvious loop hole, and I was taking it.

I worked on my lines as I walked towards the doors. Something light. Maybe I would casually throw her name into the conversation just as she had done to me. See how she liked it. I wish I had something more personal about her in my limited knowledge of her.

I knew the curve of her hips, but not her middle name. Knew how her skin stretched tight against her bones as she lay back on a bed, but I didn't know where she had come from. Hell, probably, since she haunted me like my own personal demon. She was out to ruin me, hitting me where it would hurt the most. Public.

I threw open the doors, looking down to where Micheal had left her, breath pulled deeply into my chest to throw my first witty comment at her that would shake her off her feet.

But she wasn't there.

All my breath whooshed out in a single, disappointed, "Oh." The caf doors closed behind me with a bang.

Rosalie laughed, and then the rest of them started, though Alice, at least, tried to apologize. _'Sorry, Edward, but you should have seen the look on your face.'_

I grimaced. My kind, loving sister had seen me make a fool of myself, and had said nothing. Thank you, Alice. I'm glad I amuse you.

I took a careful breath in through clenched teeth, preparing myself.

I suppressed a wince. Even through the open space, and the time that scent had to dissipate into the lemon cleaner and the rubber of a few hundred shoe soles, it was still honestly painful. Gripping fiery claws that crawled up and down my throat.

It wasn't nearly as bad as the first time, and I took comfort in that, though it was only because her scent was weakened. I knew that when I found her—and I would invariably have her thrown at me in some unexpected way—it would be just as bad as the very first time.

With this in mind, I started to follow her scent, heading towards my locker to collect my books. I slid around corners, listening carefully to make sure she wasn't going to pop out of no where and give me a metaphorical heart attack.

I was aware of how paranoid I was being. Crazy even. There were bodies in all the classes around here, teachers prepping for the next period, helping students who had come during lunch to ask a question. The doors were closed, heart beats close to the walls. It was as if there was someone always around the corner, waiting for me. It was only when I placed the position of their thoughts with their physical position that I felt secure to move.

God, I was paranoid. At least there was no one to see it. But I had lost her scent, she must have deviated—

"Dan na na na na," I didn't even turn around, just let my head fall against the painted grey brick, "Batman!" she finished, and I could hear the amusement in her voice.

I peeked at her sheepishly. There was a tingling in my cheeks as the venom raced to my expanding capillaries. It wasn't noticeable to her, but it flustered me. My long dead human blush coming back to haunt me.

"Hey." I forgot to throw her name at her, and when I remembered that I had planned to, it seemed a little too late to make it sound witty. What did it really matter now that I had lost all the poise and significance I had been striving towards. "Annabel."

She had appeared out of the girl's washroom, something I hadn't anticipated. She pushed herself off the wall now, and started to walk away from me, in the opposite direction of our next class. "Oh," she said flippantly, "That's not my name."

How easily she could say that, as if I had guessed a favourite flavour of ice cream wrong rather than her identity.

How perfectly casual.

How completely mind boggling.

How fucking annoying.

"Oh."

I felt very much like a spent balloon: deflated.

And then I started towards class, because that was the _right_ thing to do. It was the safe thing. It was the responsible thing, because I obviously could not be responsible around her if I was constantly slipping, if I couldn't even keep track of her _whereabouts, _let along her thoughts. If there was an actual rule book laid out for these kind of situations, _this_ would be the direction: walk away, and don't get involved. I would watch out for my family, I would follow the rules, and dammit, I would _walk. __a. way. _

Because it was the right thing to do.

And to do anything else would be very, _very_ selfish.

And egocentric.

And wrong.

Very wrong.

Very, very, _very_ wrong.

I turned around and started to follow her.

Of course, stupid me, I took a deep breath in. Not because I needed it, or because I thought that it would be a whole lot of fun to combust on the spot (which I instantly did). I did it, because suddenly, inexplicably, I was nervous. Apprehensive.

I honestly felt like I was on fire, which wasn't soothing me at all. It was genuinely painful to take that first breath, even when the uneasy panic tightened my chest enough for only a shallow gasp.

She didn't look strong enough to carry tons of thick concrete slabs with her, but she must, because in that one small, shallow breath, she nearly threw me back into the wall with the delectable force of her scent.

I watched her back as she walked. Her hair was still up in the pony-tail that I had seen her wearing this morning, and it kind of swung when she walked. Her hair was very dark, but it looked soft as well, so it didn't catch the fake light to shine in a similarly false fashion.

I wondered if it was actually as soft as it looked to be, and pulled the memory of the dark car back to me. I had only touched her hair though, not properly admired the texture, so I really wasn't _sure_ about—

Why was I thinking about this at all?

She turned the corner then, and I was sure that she had seen me out of the corner of her eye—possitive, actually—but she didn't turn around right away. She waited until she was at her locker, conveniently located right out side the cafeteria doors, and then started to spin the combo on her lock.

"I thought you were, uh," and then she smiled, "Doing your ninja thing the other way." she nodded her head the way she came without looking at me. In fact, she hadn't looked at me once while speaking to me.

Was that normal?

I didn't think so, but why would she _not_ look at me? Why, in fact, would she wait for an opportunity to distract herself before speaking to me? Why not have asked me before we reached her locker when she had first seen me as we turned the corner? She _had_ to have seen me there, because she hadn't looked back any other time, not even when she turned to undo her lock.

I cocked my head at her. "My...pardon? My _ninja_ thing?"

She still didn't turn to look at me, though by the subdued laughter in her voice, I imagined her eyes were bright with amusement. "Yeah. How long did you have to practice walking so quietly? _My_ shoes squeaked the whole way here."

Her cheek turned up in a smile, and I was almost desperate to see her eyes. What did they look like when she so calmly stated her observations? I was tempted to tilt her face in my direction with a careful finger under her chin.

But _that _would be a mistake. I didn't want to risk touching her, and chance the second, more lustful monster, reawakening.

Instead, I forced myself back to our conversation. It wasn't so difficult a jump in concentration, seeing as they were each mainly riveted on her.

I honestly hadn't noticed her shoes squeaking. I'd been too caught up in how her hair was moving to be distracted by the perfectly normal sounds her shoes were making.

"It didn't take much practice at all. Have my soft steps perturbed you?" I wondered, partially amused. I was also quite worried that she _would_ be bothered. The particular quiet tendencies of our kind made humans uncomfortable, the way we unintentionally snuck up on them.

Rather than answer, she asked another question. "Were you're parents older when they had you?" she wondered suddenly, and then she was blushing.

The heat from the swirling blood, just under the surface of her sheer skin, was enough to warm the next breath I took enough to actually feel as warm as the fire that was ripping up and down my throat. This was obviously to the effect of my perspective, being as cold as I was. This was much better than being in the car with her though, even with the windows open. She was less concentrated this way, much easier to handle _physically_.

Psychologically, I was in a different sort of hell. "Why do you ask?" I wondered guardedly. It was such a _weird_ question to ask.

She shrugged, bending down to organize her books. She placed her biology textbook, and then her binder down, before placing a balled up mandatory gym uniform on top. And then she turned towards me casually, as if I wasn't nearly writhing in desperation to see her eyes.

I couldn't focus on them right away though, her words rather, were what captivated me.

"Because you speak really formally. I was wondering if you picked that up from your parents."

"That was quite a rude question to ask." I snapped, my anger unjust. I was angry, because I was scared. She had hit the nail on the head yet again with such perfect accuracy. I hadn't thought it was very obvious—no other humans had ever picked up on it until now—but I _had_ inherited a certain form of speech, and it had been from my parents.

And the time period.

Annabel (I realized I was still calling her Annabel, even when I knew it wasn't her name.), looked started by my anger. "It's only a rude question if you're embarrassed by it."

Or I had something to hide. "What do you mean?" I wasn't angry anymore, curious was more appropriate, one emotion blending into the next so rapidly I felt a little dizzy.

She was blushing again, I tried not to pay attention to that, instead letting the curiosity bloom to pull my considerations towards less deadly paths. The colour on her face started at her cheek bones and seem to consume her face with life. Even her dark eyes which were now tightened slightly in embarrassment seemed lighter. I felt like if I leaned in just a bit, I would be able to see all the way down to the very bottom.

She was speaking fast, her head titled lightly to the side in the way one would when considering something. She didn't seem to be considering me though, more like she was trying to rush as fast as she could through her explanation. The curiosity at his strange posture flared unbidden this time, and it _was_ enough to distract me from her blush. Or at least the very terrible things it enticed.

"I mean, if you were proud of the way you spoke, when I commented on it, you would take it as a compliment. But you're obviously trying to hide it, so I'm sorry for pointing it out."

She suddenly smiled widely, "If _you_ want to make a blatant observation, feel free to do so."

Initially, my primary response was to retaliate that a _gentleman_ of proper breading would not be so impulsive. It was fairly pathetic to know that I didn't plan to say anything, less from good breading than that I didn't have much of her to go on.

_'You have brown hair!' _Is not exactly witty.

I was shocked to find that I _was _saying something though, my lips moving before my brain could quite give consent.

"It's not fair that you know more about me, than I do of you." I frowned, so much for not being impulsive, and leaned against the lockers beside hers. The metal door of the locker, and the frame came together loudly at my sudden weight. I was remembering the way she had looked so unwilling to give me the simple, unintrusive information of her age. I thought I saw her wince though, at the sound, but it might have been the question, or the lights.

My mind tried desperately to pry into hers to no avail.

She shot me a dubious look, and then bent to retrieve her books, robbing me of her eyes. The expressions, the clear as day thoughts that she seemed to be making a sport of secreting from my intensely curious mind, were all I had to go on.

"_I_ wasn't loose with my information. You were." She shrugged.

I glared. "I was not _loose_ with anything."

Annabel spun to see my expression, so judge, I'm sure, how serious I was. For a moment, I was just immensely pleased that I could say something that was deserving of her gaze. Then, upon seeing that I was sincere, she threw her head back and laughed, and I wasn't so pleased anymore.

"Edward!" she cried, still laughing, "you _threw_ your _wallet_ at me!" and then in a much more conspiratorial voice, though the humour was still in her lips, she added, "And I don't think I really need to point out the ridiculousness that the rest of your statement encompasses."

I pointedly ignored the second half of her statement, though I was enamoured with how her eyes had shone while she spoke. _Our little secret, _they promised.

"I did not _throw_ my wallet at you, I simply...dropped it artfully."

"I'm sure."

I sighed. I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere with her. I felt like I was stumbling around in a thick fog, trying to distinguish hazy objects and indistinct shadows. I would gain a piece of information of her, and think I had actually learned something, and then find I was no closer to learning anything of her at all.

It was...disheartening. I didn't like not knowing. Not knowing her mind, or her name, or even why she was at _this_ school. Weren't there others? Ones that were closer? Or perhaps that was what she was trying to avoid...recognition.

"Tell me you're name then," I bargained without much hope, as she shut her locker, the lock snapping up into place. I had a plan instead. "Just to even out the playing field a little."

She didn't even turn to look at me, she was looking off down the hall. "Now why would I want to do that?" she asked, distractedly. I looked past her keenly, hoping to find the reason for her abstraction as if it were painted on the wall. As if her thoughts were so simply found and read. The only thing I saw was the end of the hallway.

"Because it would be nice. Ease my suffering just a tad." Even if it was _just _ her name, to know _anything _about this girl would relieve me of the sense of detachment she seemed to carry with her. She didn't seem exactly _real _to me. No name, no distinguishable thoughts, hardly a place I could pin her to. Just a face, a pair of incredibly deep eyes, and a strange discerning magnetism over the opposite sex.

"I don't do nice."

I didn't believe that.

I launched the second piece of my plan. "Then at the very least tell me why you didn't give the school your real name."

By asking the first very intrusive—or, intrusive to her, at least—question, I was hoping that _this_ one would seem much less demanding in comparison.

It worked.

She sighed, leaning against the lockers as I did, her head falling back to look at the ceiling. "Because, Edward"—she was saying my name to irk me, I was sure of it—"My particular situation kind of called for it."

Or maybe it hadn't worked at all. "You're particular situation?" I didn't learn anything about her.

She sighed, a long, tired sound, and closed her eyes.

It took me a moment of staring at her stupidly to finally get it. "Oh." She was a prostitute, and that didn't exactly put her on friendly terms with the justice system, or any other kind of governmental institution. She had either lied about her name because she had charges against her, or she was taking precautions against any that should find her. "I see."

"I'm glad." She whispered, not sounding glad at all. She sounded suddenly exhausted. I saw that she had dark circles under her eyes. Now that I wasn't so caught up in what was happening in her eyes, I now saw what was _under _them.

I watched her, curiously taking in her profile. Her nose, I saw now, was remarkably straight. Very attractive, even if it was a little too thin. It made her quite interesting to look at. I had thought that her face was at it most interesting when I was able to see the asymmetry of her lips. Or rather the perfectly awkward symmetry. Now I wasn't to sure that I didn't like watching the slope of her nose gracefully peak, and then move down to the full shape of her lips. Her delicate chin. Her even more delicate throat...

I was doing a very poor job of convincing myself that I wasn't on fire. My throat felt both raw and chard to near coal by the ripping burn that was clawing its way up and down my throat. I had to start pulling in more careful breaths now that I wasn't so distracted by her.

It was hard to remember that she was not mine. Not mine to destroy.

"Edward?" She asked, her eyes sliding open.

"Yes?" I shivered at the prospect of watching her eyes again. What a strange reaction, to shiver when her eyes had the peculiar sensation of warmth despite their darkness. The burning started to fade slightly until it was just a barely manageable pain again. Much better than the monster grinning behind my eyes, waiting impatiently for a slip. Any slip that would earn blood.

I winced. Why was I risking her, again? Now that I was in her presence I was both absolutely aware of the interest she held for my curious mind, and the desire to keep her alive. Well and whole. I realized with a growing dismay that I _should not _be so close with so many impending risks. I should leave her alone.

And then she spoke my thoughts aloud.

"We have a deal. _Please_, stay away from me. School or not, I'm still not someone you should be associating yourself with."

For a second, all I could do was stare at her in _shock_.

For one, she had pretty much picked my conversation out of my head—quite disgraceful, considering that _I _was the mind reader here—and secondly, how she could have it so backwards.

_Her_ not someone _I_ should be associating myself with? Was she absolutely delusional, or was she really not aware that _I _was the predator here?

It was a direct slap in the face. _Her_ saying to _me_ that I was not capable of holding my own against her. That I was too weak, too _innocent_ to see the apparent danger she posed to me.

I stood up to my full height, glaring down at her threateningly, trying to shake her from the concept that I was not capable of handling myself. I was not, and _would not_ be made weak by the likes of her.

Annabel turned to face me, tilting her head all the way back to be able to see my face when I was this close to her. "Wow," she said, impressed, "You're tall."

My shoulder's dropped a little in a second dose of shock. Could _nothing _frighten her?

She didn't understand where my shock originated from through, and so she misinterpreted. Rather than shock—or maybe _awe_ at the strangeness of this creature—she imagined surprise on my part. Surprise that she had not observed the degree of my stature over hers on our first meeting. She blushed.

"I mean, last time I saw you, everything happened so _fast_."

Her eyes were suddenly intent on my face, searching for something in my expression.

Her blush, though dissolving again into the cream of her skin, did not entice my more unpleasant reactions to her proximity.

Rather, I stayed calm, collected, pretending that I wasn't having a private moment of panic. Of absolute dread. _She knew_. She saw and she remembered. The voice I had heard the first night was screaming at me to run again.

When had running _ever _been my first response to _anything_? Now it was all I wanted to do. I just wanted to run from her. I wanted to chase her. Both of these desires conflicted with the other, and I wasn't quite sure I _knew_ what I wanted when I was looking into those incredibly deep, incredibly sharp eyes.

Lost.

Yes, I felt lost. Unsure of what to do.

It took me a moment to comprehend that I was staring at her in a way that wasn't particularly polite.

Realizing she wasn't going to get an answer, and not having any idea of my internal conflict, Annabel picked her books up from the bottom of her locker. I dragged myself out of my mind, and tried to look much more calm than I felt.

"Well, it was...nice to see you again, Edward, but I have to get to class. Don't want to be late, or anything." she added lamely. Her eyes flicked away from my face down the hall, and then returned. She slowly backed away from me.

I made to follow because she _wasn't_ going to be late, even if she waited three minutes after the bell rang to _start _going to class. It was honestly just down the hall. I was about to tell her this because she was still relatively new, and surely she was still getting used to the classes, being extra cautious.

Then she forced a smile, and I realized she wasn't taking extra care to avoid being late because she was a good student, she was leaving early to avoid _me_.

She didn't like me.

I was instantly disappointed. More than that, I was offended. Honestly hurt. God, I had just stood here for a whole ten minutes, _burning_ like I was tied to a stake, opening myself to her scrutiny, and _she_ didn't have the time of day for _me_?

_What_ the_ fuck_?

And then the voice of reason chimed in. _Why _would_ she like you? _

I couldn't argue with that.

Slowly, unwillingly, I turned away and started towards my own locker. I waited until after I watched her retreating image turn the corner and disappear, then—and only then—was I able to tear myself away from where we had been.

Even knowing that in just a few minutes, I would have an uninterrupted hour to regain her regards, I couldn't seem to lighten my foot falls. Her dislike of me probably stemmed from my ghastly treatment of her on the night I had first met her. How cold, how out right rude and _mean _I had been to her? If I was polite—if I was _good_, maybe she would not have such an aversion to me. I needed her to treat me as she would anyone else, if for nothing else than my image.

I was still upset by her obvious preference for Newton over me. True, there was no agreement—that I was aware of—that bound Micheal to keep a weary distance of Annabel—

I stopped, and slowly I started to grin ridiculously.

She had distinctly said this morning that she never wanted to see me again. But, when she had said that, she had been _Chime. _

She was Annabel now, and I had made not such pact with _her_.

It seemed to be my day for exploiting loopholes.

I pushed my hands into my pockets leisurely, and started to hum, still grinning.

I felt so _devious_. I laughed aloud.

I started to imagine Annabel's expression when she walked into biology to find that the one empty seat she had sat next to all last week was suddenly occupied by me. And then her ensuing frustration when I explained that I could speak to her all I wished, thank you very much.

I felt a little childish, thinking these things, and yet I couldn't quite squash the thrill the ideas gave me. I comforted myself with the knowledge that in a week or so, this strange want of the girl would have eased back into my normal indifference that applied to the rest of her kind.

I let myself relax as I opened my locker, collecting my books for the next class.

I was regaining my control. Inch by inch, I would right everything that had been wronged from when she had ripped into my life like a hurricane. A fiery hurricane.

The bell rang as I gathered my own books up.

I wonder how Annabel would react to her own, personal, hurricane.

I grinned, my teeth flashing dangerously exposed, and for once, I didn't much care.


	6. night and day

**Night and Day**

**Teeny Tiny Twilight**

_I let myself relax as I opened my locker, collecting my books for the next class. _

_I was regaining my control. Inch by inch, I would right everything that had been wronged from when she had ripped into my life like a hurricane. A fiery hurricane._

_The bell rang as I gathered my own books up. _

_I wonder how Annabel would react to her own, personal, hurricane._

_I grinned, my teeth flashing dangerously exposed, and for once, I didn't much care._

I always knew the flaws in my character. A lethal God-complex, a terrible habit of invading the privacy of the whole of the population—with the exclusion of one individual—and a terrible selfishness that branched off into other character flaws such as a poor control of my temper and an ambition that put _Macbeth_ to shame. I was absolutely aware of the darker avenues of my character.

Who isn't, though? The truly ignorant might not, and the very few who actually believed themselves to be completely above reprimand. Unluckily—or luckily, I suppose, for the truly optimistic—I didn't fall into either of these categories.

When you possess a conscience, a funny thing happens. You begin to see all the flaws of yourself. Like sitting with a corpse, the longer you stay, the more terrible it becomes. All the pretty flesh rots, and you begin to see the skeleton beneath. And then there is horror, because you were hoping to find all those pretty white bones, but the lovely skin, the strong muscles, have tainted the fundamental structure from white to black, and you find that the very core is just as awful as the exterior.

_Because_ of the exterior.

Beauty is suddenly ugly, and you only want to turn away from it. To run, and hide from this strange world that has always been the one you have lived in, only with less clarity. You pray for blindness and only find sight.

Very few people have watched a corpse rot, and while it hadn't been the height of _my _days—and probably not his either—it had been the turning point from rock bottom back to the surface.

Self is too much like a corpse. I have sat within my thoughts long enough that I knew—metaphorically—how black my bones were.

It seemed I missed a spot though.

I never realized how terribly proud I was until I fully realized what I intended to do—_still_ intended to do, regardless. This was not putting a terribly self absorbed, rude, selfish (God, this sounds familiar) unpleasant woman in her place. This was not, in any way, shape, or form, justice. It was simply this: she had caused me great unease, and so I wanted to settle the score with her.

Selfish, malicious, short tempered...no, I far better fit the description of the person deserving justice than her.

She obviously hadn't intentionally caused my unease, and by anyone's estimations, I had brought it upon myself. She had never intentionally forced my hand towards intimacy with her, nor towards my desire to kill her. Not unless she was in control of the way her scent affected me, or that she happened to awaken the very worst of what I was capable of.

And she was again dragging out the worst of me, and yet I couldn't even lay blame on her. She was, in this instance, guiltless.

I walked into class with my books tucked under my arm, my conscience whipping uncomfortable questions at me that I didn't want to think too much about, but did anyway. My insides were trying to find inventive means of escape, most of which included crawling up my throat.

Annabel wasn't looking at me. I noticed that she had pulled her hair out of her ponytail, the elastic now on her wrist instead. She had her book open, reading with an expression that looked more fearful than I thought a text book was able to entice. She was leaning forward onto the desk, playing with a strand of hair mindlessly, almost roughly, in frustration. She didn't look up when I came in.

We were the only people in class except for Mr. Bertie, who was in the middle of filling the chalk board with his sloppy writing. Not even hand writing, his _printing_ was a collection of scratch work. None of the students really complained though, as Mr. Bertie was a favourite teacher among too many of the students to really garner much criticism. Besides, he'd much rather lecture than write, making the topic of his calligraphy moot. Today we had a lab though, and we didn't have time for him to repeat again and again a single sentence while one lone student struggled to keep up.

My conscience—in fact, my contemptuous, ill-meaning plans to ease my indignation—forgotten, I took the seat next to Annabel. I was curious to see what it was about the text that was so upsetting. Not completely forgetting myself, I pulled my chair as far from hers as the desk would allow.

She hadn't looked up, but I figured she was permanently implementing an '_I'm going to ignore you for as long as I can'_ rule for every one of our encounters. If this was how she proposed to dissuade my interest, she was going about it the exact wrong way. Rather than secret, she would do well to reveal a little every now and then. The faster the puzzle was solved, the faster I would be able to successfully stifle my unbidden curiosity, the faster she would be safe, the faster I could sink back into the life I was familiar with.

The thought suddenly wasn't as appealing as it had been this morning. Even then, there had been a small little unwilling twitch in my chest. I suddenly wondered if this was going to get harder, rather than easier, as time passed. I dismissed the ridiculousness of this notion with a shrug. She was simply human. There were only about six billion more just like her. Approximately.

I checked my air, and then cautiously leaned in to see what she was reading from the text book. I still couldn't imagine that she would find anything upsetting enough in the academic writing that would garner an expression of such dread. She had her elbows propped on the edge of the table, leaning over her book in such a way that it blocked an easy view to what she was reading, causing me to have to lean in closer than would have been necessary had she been sitting up.

She looked up then, towards the front, and the hair that had been shielding me from her peripheral vision fell back and I suddenly realized as she spun and gasped at the proximity of our faces that she had not—as I had assumed—been ignoring me. She honestly hadn't noticed I was even there.

Poor human.

She went to stand, to take a startled step back away from me, but the chair hindered the movement and she ended up on the floor instead. It all seemed to happen in one fluent, yet graceless moment.

I blinked at her.

"What's wrong with you?" she cried, her voice shaking a little. Her heart was sprinting a mini-marathon in her chest. Mr. Bertie spared a look back, and then went back to writing, chalk clicking against the board.

I had been a tiny bit amused with her until she had yelled at me.

"I don't have the list with me," I said dryly. I stood, offering my hand to help her up. She ignored the gesture with a glare in my direction and picked herself up off the floor. "I didn't mean to startle you, I'm sorry," I said as I sat back down, contrite.

Or trying to be contrite, at least. I was actually quite entertained by her expression of shock. I chuckled. She levelled a look at me in a way that I'm sure was supposed to admonish me. I smiled broadly despite her chastising.

She huffed, and then shoved her text book towards me. "Redeem yourself," she ordered, still irritated and, judging by the pace of her heart, still recovering.

I took the text, angling it so that she could easily see what I saw. "What don't you get?"

She leaned in towards me, and I _knew_ that I should lean back, but I couldn't quite find the will to do so. We were suddenly very, _very_ close, and it would not be at all good for my image of _normal_ if I suddenly jumped on her. I hadn't taken a breath yet, but my air reserve was low enough that I would need one soon unless I was planning to grunt my way though the rest of our conversation.

"I know mitosis is about splitting one cell into two identical cells, and obviously you had to copy the chromosomes inside the cells to do that, and that those contain DNA...but I don't understand what the DNA Polymerase and DNA ligase are doing. At all. This doesn't even look like mitosis." She looked scared again.

I tried to hide my smile, but it was hard. She had met with a hostile vampire with ease in the dark. Alone. _Twice_. She had not only met my gaze—quite a feat for humans—but stared me down. God, she was a whore; she regularly risked assault, battery, and rape on a regular basis. Did she even flinch at any of this, though?

No.

But the prospect of not understanding scared her.

Despite the ridiculousness of this, I felt like I was having an insight into her mind. She was used to knowing things, to understanding things quickly and easily.

She was intelligent.

"You are in luck. It doesn't look like mitosis because it _isn't_. This is DNA replication..." I stopped then, confused, though that was the least of my worries. DNA replication was in the grade twelve curriculum. Actually, it was the grade twelve _advanced_ curriculum.

I flipped the book closed, as I looked at the cover. There was a little lady bug perched on the edge of a leaf rather than the snake lunging at a very startled looking mouse. I cocked my head at Annabel. We didn't have these text books at this school; they only offered middle level courses here.

I badly wanted to ask where she had gotten this text book from, but I was out of air. I was either going to have to sit mute for the rest of the class—very strange and extremely rude on my part, even if I hadn't wanted to talk to her—or I would need to take a breath.

I clenched my teeth, steeled my muscles tight against my bones to strangle even a _twitch_, and then inhaled.

For a short moment, not even long enough to fill the space of half a second, it was the most heavenly feeling. It wrapped around me and sank into my skin as if I were as permeable as a sponge, rather than a thick slab of stone. Her scent was pure euphoria until my body recognized that I was not, in fact, going to allow her blood to run smoothly down my throat, warming my cold flesh until it was like I was alive again...

Then it was agony.

My muscles trembled under my skin in impatience, as if they had a mind of their own, but I forced myself into absolute stillness. I swallowed back a sudden flood of venom, and I could swear my _teeth_ were tingling.

It took every ounce of my century's worth of self-denial to keep my head, and even then, I could just barely control my expression.

I didn't want to think about this, that I was acting more animal than man. Animal instincts, animal desires, animal thoughts...this was essentially how I had lived as a hunter, but my targets had not been the weak and the sick, as most animals chose their prey. My prey had been the cruel and the vile. Murderers, paedophiles, rapists, lynchers... though, I was myself a lyncher in that way; _I_ knew without doubt when my prey was guilty.

I never wanted to return to that life.

So I didn't think about it.

"Annabel!"

I had just been about to ask her about the origins of the text book, but William LeCroux, a shorter, fit boy with dark hair and dark eyes, jokingly pushed Micheal out of the seat he had taken behind Annabel as the class had slowly trickled in. He spared me one look as Annabel turned to look at him. _'What's Cullen doing with Annabel? I thought he haunted the back. Probably being a creeper up here now.' _I met his eyes and he looked away quickly—a _normal_ reaction in humans. _'Freak.'_

I was surprised. As far as I knew, William never held any ill will towards me. I was even more shocked to find that the feeling was mutual.

I found a smile working its way up my lips, bemused by the girl and the wide variety of chaos that she wreaked on my life. My life and others, I judged, by the excited jittery thoughts bouncing around through William's mind.

Annabel smiled warmly, something I had yet to experience myself, and greeted him. "Hey. What's—"

He cut her off excitedly, and I almost hit him for it. "I got that song you were telling me about last week." He pulled out his iPod, the earbuds wrapped around the thin frame.

Annabel's entire face lit up, and then I was grinning too, just watching her. Like her blood had just moments before, something wrapped itself around me, soft as a caress, and sank into my bones. It was surprisingly pleasant. "You did? What do you think?" William teetered his hand in the air with an unimpressed expression. Annabel's expression dropped, disappointed. "Oh. Yeah, well, everyone has different tastes." she responded glumly, and then added quietly, "I guess."

William laughed, handing her the iPod, "I'm joking! It's already one of my top played songs on my playlist." '_Because it makes me think of you'_

I caught verses of the song, a rhythm. There was a general focus on a wish, but he wasn't really thinking about the song. The petite brunette that was half turned in her seat to speak with him had him captured.

I almost laughed. William was thinking about how desperately in love he was with her, having listened to the song on repeat all night last night in bed, just thinking about her. How human. I'm sure in a month or so he would be desperately in love with another new face.

Annabel, who had been flicking though his songs, looked up to presumably make a comment on this, only to see that everyone within hearing distance was staring at her. Intently. She blushed again and quickly looked down, flipping her hair over her shoulders, erecting a liquescent mahogany wall around her.

I cocked my head at her, wanting an answer to this reaction. It would have been a fairly acceptable reaction to attention if had thought that she was at all shy. That wasn't the impression I had from her. She was too calm, too comfortable with social situations to be shy.

No, it seemed that she was _embarrassed_ by the attention, almost nervous of it, as if it carried ill-intentions, though I couldn't understand why. Humans _loved_ attention.

There was strength in numbers, so no human's instinct would pull at them to distance themselves from the herd. Humans, though, were not merely pack animals; they recognized the potential power the group had if they could only find their way to the top of the hierarchy usually obtainable through social status. The more friends you had, the more of the group you had behind you; the more of the group you had behind you, the more power you had; the more power you had, the more attention you could gather from the group.

Long story short; the brighter the spotlight, the bigger the following.

I was distracted by the loud squeal of Michael dragging his chair over from the back to plop down right next to Annabel, directly in the centre of the isle. He hadn't noticed her discomfort, or the oddness of that discomfort. Didn't she _like _having friends?

"What are you doing?" he inquired, nosily, it seemed to me.

Annabel tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and I was amazed at the simple gesture. Her hair was shinny, her body heat warming me even from where I was. I could imagine that her hair was soft and warm. "Um, unfairly judging Will by his music."

William was suddenly, exceedingly nervous. "Do I pass?"

She wrinkled her nose playfully, "Only if you have a _really_ good reason for why I'm not seeing any _Them Crooked Vultures_ on here."

William relaxed, laughing. "Because you haven't filched my iPod until now. I wasn't prepared."

I made a face. I wasn't particularly fond of _Them Crooked Vultures._ To me, they sounded like the collective vomit of four dying one hit wonders trying desperately to swim against the current before they became completely washed up. It was actually fairly pathetic.

Annabel, in perfect character, noticed. "What's that face for?" She had her eyes on me now, and though her voice was patronizing, her eyes were playful and open. Warm. It was an invitation to join their camaraderie as if I was one of them.

It seemed, for a moment, that it might just be the most anyone had ever given me, and I felt the sudden vicious pull of her, as if she were a magnet.

A magnetic personality. It was almost too cliche to swallow.

And yet, it wasn't. There was all this warmth, and buoyancy and excitement that hadn't been there before. Despite all the havoc she seemed to leave in her wake, all this good humour seemed to be originating from her.

I couldn't answer right away. For as congenial as the offer was, I was confused. Hadn't she told me in the hall just moments before that I wasn't to share her company, in any way, shape, or form? Now she was asking me to join in her conversation. I didn't understand the change. Not that I'd had the intention to honour her wishes outright, but still, the sudden change...

_What is she thinking?_ I floundered for words and drew a blank. Nothing articulate swam to the surface, and so I was left staring at her mutely.

Michael only noticed the most shallow inflections on her voice, and he fed off of that. Feeling confident and wanting to please her in the way of backing her up, thinking it would make him look comparatively witty and attractively dispassionate, he sneered at me. "What's it to you, Casper?"

William, though not particularly pleased with Michael as he was fierce competition for Annabel's attention, was pleased someone was prematurely cutting me off from her growing group of admirers. _'He's weird, but he's good looking,'_ he admitted grudgingly. He feared that my looks might be the snare to catch Annabel.

I looked at her, so soft and sharp all at once, and couldn't believe that she would fall for the guise.

Then again, that_ was_ what my face and body were designed for, to attract prey. And she—despite some quirks in her instincts—was still human. Still prey.

I was about to laugh openly at Michael, both brushing him off as insignificant, and simultaneously defend myself to keep from falling in Annabel's regards. A fairly natural and automatic reaction when you needed to brush everyone off. When you lived a life like mine, distance was golden.

"Hey—!" Annabel cried, and she pressed her arm against mine.

I wasn't sure, but I was fairly certain I was having the vampire equivalent of a heart attack. My chest felt suddenly tight, and my skin burned, not only with the heat of her soft flesh, but also with excitement. I was suddenly splendidly aware of all my surroundings, right down to how the heat of her body shot heat against the left side of my body in a disjointed rhythm. Her heart was drumming around excitedly in her chest, and I was nearly shivering from the feel of her skin, naturally, willingly, _shockingly_, touching mine.

I wanted to jump up and scream, just to give this exhilaration an outlet.

Excluding the rapturous excitement, my body seemed to be hunting without the intent of blood. I was burning, of course, but the precipice I balanced precariously on didn't seem so fine in this one moment. I was still in danger of killing her, and I could do it so easily right now. The want hadn't lessened any to deter me, but my range for control seemed to have broadened slightly. Rather than balancing on a thin threat of control, it was now a thin wire.

Annabel was speaking, and I followed her gaze to our touching arms. Ivory against alabaster sunlight, and though she was pale—paler, in fact, than most of the people in this town—there was something about her skin that looked like it held the sun rather than burned from it."—my arm is almost as pale as his is." and then she broke our connection, and looked straight at Michael with a raised eyebrow. "And _I'm_ not a ghost. Just half albino."

Despite the weary sarcastic quirk to her lips, Michael thought she was serious.

No one had the chance to comment. Mr. Bertie called the class to order then and started to do attendance.

This was good. I needed a second to gather my thoughts. My jovial mood crashed down with enough force that I thought I might shatter into thousands of little pieces of vampire all over the floor. What a mess. Thankfully I was near enough to indestructible that such a scene was avoided.

Comparing the significant difference in our skin—creamy living flesh to white ice—I remembered that I was not like her, and so her offer for me to join in with their human camaraderie was in vain.

Mr. Bertie's sudden consideration on the object of my affliction pulled me out of the slow downwards spiral I could feel myself getting snared in.

His considerable brow furrowed, as he stared at her, frustrated._ 'Her name_' He thought, desperately flipping through names in his head, looking for something that matched with the face of the girl before him whose smile was slowly growing in amusement. _'It's on the tip of my tongue.'_

_You and I both,_ I thought wryly, pulling in another breath delicately.

I had a dual view of Annabel's sugar sweet smile. Too innocent, I decided with a chuckle. "I'm not going to help you this time," she lilted cheerfully, a teasing smile pulling up the corners of her mouth, her head titling playfully to the side.

I noticed that when she smiled like that, truly cheerful, I could see the brilliant white of her teeth beyond the full pink of her lips.

I suddenly realized I was on the edge of darkness. Not moving into it, but _away. _It was a surreal feeling, one I was having trouble fully grasping onto. I wasn't even sure what I was supposed to do, to take that first step. For the first time in a long time, a very long time, I felt helpless. I dangled on a new precipice. The one I was familiar with had a strong gale at my back, pushing me towards the darkness, the all consuming fire. This strange new frontier was strangely calm, and I was looking out towards the light. Just one step...

_'I wonder what it feels like to kiss her'_ Michael thought randomly, staring at her lips as I was. I glared flatly at my desk, at the swirling of synthetic wood pulp. The compulsion to steak a claim on a territory that wasn't mine shook me from my thoughts. I directed my concentration towards avenues that didn't end with me standing above a very broken Michael. Maybe with a little gore.

I grinned.

Mr. Bertie was giving Annabel a dark look, but he liked her in the way that teachers do. He thought she was refreshing, and even though she seemed to have a never ending collection of questions, he thought that she was intelligent. People like her were why he had wanted to become a teacher: young and inquisitive.

"It's instrumental," he decided, considering her.

"Ish," she agreed. A blush bloomed on her pale skin, and for the second time since I walked into the classroom, I wasn't particularly happy to be sitting beside her. I didn't enjoy conflagration as a hobby; masochism just didn't appeal to me the same way chess did.

I wondered where the blush came from though. Obviously I was not focusing on the blood itself; that should be the _last_ thing on my mind. I was instead, wondering what had embarrassed her about his spoken thoughts.

Mr. Bertie squinted one eye at her. "And it reminds me of Lucy Montgomery."

We were both considering her now, though _Anne of Green Gables _was not what was on my mind.

"It's Annabel!" Michael unexpectedly exploded next to Annabel, making her start a little, and lean towards me. My arm twitched, wanting to wrap around her protectively. Impossibly.

"Hey!" Annabel and Mr. Bertie cried at the same time, but Annabel was close enough to push him—nearly out of his seat, actually. "I hearby vote you off our table!"

People laughed, William thought of brushing a stray strand of hair back behind her ear, and in return, I thought of breaking his arm. I could feel a new normal setting in.

When Michael didn't move immediately, William grabbed the back of his chair, and made to drag him back to the back of the room. Mr. Bertie gave him a sharp look that made him stop right away. "What?" William asked anyway.

Mr. Bertie shook his head, "They don't pay me enough." Then he turned to the chalk board. "Okay, note and then lab. Get started now so you don't have to finish it tomorrow at lunch or after school."

Everyone pulled their books out, and the chatter started as a low buzz. Annabel's books were already open, half of the note already copied.

I looked at her calligraphy, curious. I had always heard that it could tell you about someone's personality. Mine, for example, was very neat and though not completely diminutive, it was still small, sloping to the right, very little weight on my pen. I was well educated, freely able to express my emotions and rationed the amount of energy I put towards a task, or, in other words, thoughtful and careful. A tiny bit selfish.

I imagined hers would be similar. She had not demonstrated in any way a lack of intelligence, and though she could have a very cool demeanour, she had also smiled and laughed, whispered a threat at me, and admitted her desire to keep me safe from harm. She seemed very careful. I knew nothing about her, because she wanted it that way.

Then again, I really hadn't been trying all that hard to ferret out her secrets. It was well within my power to follow her home.

_But is it in your _control_?_ the piece of me that wanted to hide her from the eyes of this room asked. The protective piece that worried I wouldn't be strong enough in the end.

I was shocked to find that, upon peering over at her page, her writing was messy, sloping to the left, her pen pushed hard enough into the paper that the next sheet probably carried scars.

Uneducated or uncoordinated, hid her emotions, and put vast amounts of energy into everything she did. Generous.

I stared at the differences between our writing, and felt a great crash of disappointment. _Uneducated,_ I thought scornfully.

Here I had constructed an Annabel that didn't exist, based purely on her reactions, on her words, on her eyes, and, it seemd, that without the mental context as a guide, I was a useless judge of character. I looked at the advanced text she had flipped over, to hide its cover from her peers, and wondered how off I had been.

The two were like night and day, though. Truly like the two different pieces of her. Chime, who I knew only in night, and then Annabel, too bright for anything but the day. Even with her two identities...I was having a little trouble fitting this new piece in with either of them.

Looking at her, I could still see a sharpness about her eyes, an intelligent light that wove itself into the darkness of her irises. Her expressions were written so clear that I could almost trace where the little 'v' of worry sat between her brows, the patient lines around her eyes.

I was so sure that the Annabel I saw now was the one that existed, but maybe I had created her out of hope. Surely, if this prostitute carried so much potential for goodness, then maybe there was even just a taste of redemption within my own grasp. Maybe not everything was so black and white.

But she was _not_ redemption, or a sign from a higher power to keep hope, and nothing in me augured for peace. Not in this life, and certainly not in the next. My soul had been promised for me towards a much darker power than the one I sought.

I finished my note, feeling like a coat of heavy stone had been laid across my shoulders.

No soul, no peace, no point.

Cheerful.

I smiled bleakly. Well, if I were bent for hell, I might as well make the most of it. It's the journey, not the destination, _n'est-ce pas_? I offered the first slide, a small rectangle of glass with a purple blob in the middle, to Annabel. "So, I'm confused," I started, barrelling right into a conversation like a furious bull.

Her shoulders perceptibly dropped as if my words carried a burden she carried. "Edward, we haven't even started the lab. Give it a chance before you give up."

I blinked at her mutely, thrown. "You," I said finally. "_You_ confuse me."

"Oh. Sorry." She looked through the microscope. "Telophase."

She went to take the slide out, to replace it with the next. Stupidly, unthinkingly, still reeling from her casual disregard, I caught her hand. "Do you mind if I take a look?"

She ripped her hand out of mine, startled. "Go ahead," she managed, rubbing the offended skin where my flesh had stolen heat from hers. Her eyes were wide.

I quickly looked into the microscope, if only for somewhere else to look instead of the startled eyes. The startled eyes that suddenly were brimming with questions.

My hand tingled with warmth. Stolen, or otherwise, it was still a delicious feeling. Part of me wanted to 'accidentally' brush against her to prompt another bout of the sensation that felt so much like my nerves were waking up from a long hibernation, and they celebrating. The other part of me was intensely wary of her stunned expression, knowing that it would soon give way to curiosity.

"Telophase," I agreed, watching the cell's fight for partition while the chromosomes clung to their familiar twins. I myself was getting the hang of such intrapersonal wars. I chanced a glance at Annabel. She was retrieving the next slide for me. I slid it in. "Metaphase."

"Can I see?" she asked with over done casualness, and I pushed the microscope towards her. I wondered if she really thought I was wrong. And then I smirked at the idea.

I stared at her. "Doesn't it bother you? Don't you even want to _know_ what makes you an enigma?"

She shrugged, pushing the microscope towards me without my having to ask this time. "Not really. Besides, I can't be too enigmatic if you can tell my why."

"Touché," I grumbled. "Anaphase."

She looked and nodded. I realized that she hadn't once reached for the paper to write down the names, and I wondered why. I looked at the sloppy, left slanted writing, annoyed that I still couldn't find the girl it portrayed in the one beside me. I may have been sulking.

"Oh fine, go ahead. How am I confusing, Edward?" I looked to see her cheek propped onto her palm, her elbow against the table. She didn't look enthusiastic.

I felt my muscles pulling into a grin I hadn't called for. "You couldn't resist."

"Never mind," she grumbled almost inaudibly, reaching to take the microscope. I inched it away, and she met my eyes again, looking more wary than irritated. And rightfully so.

"You're giving me mixed signals. One second you don't want me talking to you, the next you're practically dragging me into the conversation. How am I supposed to know what you want?" I grinned darkly at her, "I might just get so confused everything you've said will become void, and I might, possibly, stumble into your part of town." I shrugged. "Who knows?"

She was gaping at me. "_What?_ I _dragged _you into the conversation?" she grabbed at the microscope furiously, pushing the slide into the stage with surprising gentleness despite the heated energy emanating from her. She took a deep breath, long and slow. "Interphase," she said in a much calmer voice.

I watched her curiously. She was using the microscope as an excuse for something else to look at while she cooled down. I didn't ask to check her answer. As much as an insolent boor I felt like for upsetting her—intentionally at that—I was also strangely pleased that I could shake her from her calm. I also felt...happy. Excited to be talking to her. High, in a way that I hadn't ever felt before.

Another symptom? Could she really cause such a great flux in me from one simple night? Not even really an hour of her time, and she had managed to turn me upside down. Stranger still, I _liked_ it.

I think.

William looked up from his microscope, wondering if he should cut in. Wondering why I knew where her part of town was at all, and if he should be worried. He had no clue, and I realized, out of all these children, _I_ was the one who knew her best. It was a pleasing kind of knowledge, like it gave me some claim to her that the others didn't have. Couldn't have.

She seemed to have controlled herself enough to feel that she could meet my eyes again. I hadn't even really noticed until she looked up again, but I had stopped breathing when she had looked away. I thought something was missing. I pulled in a deep breath through my mouth, fighting against her fire as it raged in my throat.

"I'm sorry I confused you," she said in a carefully controlled voice, still choleric. I pursed my lips against a smile. "I was only trying to be polite before. If you don't want me to talk to you—"

"Who said that?" I asked brightly.

She closed her eyes, teeth clenched. She pulled her hair up into a pony-tail, let it down, pulled it back up again. "You did, Edward." she nearly growled under her fleeting calm, barely holding onto her temper.

I was finding I _really_ liked the way my name fell from her lips, especially when there was such a strong undercurrent of emotion. "Did I? I only meant to lobby for impartiality. I mean, if you can talk to me whenever, why can't I talk to you, also?"

"Edward, Mondays _really_ aren't good for me. Can we do this tomorrow?"

I grinned. "Sounds like a deal to me," I agreed.

Her eyes flashed open. "Deal?" she gasped. Finally, _finally_, she was the one floundering.

_Victory!_ I celebrated, my eagerness spilling over into a wide smile. All my teeth flashed, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if it scared her.

And I broke my rule.

I touched her.

She was still looking a little blindsided when I took her hand, shaking it, holding on slightly longer than necessary, robbing her of her heat.

Heat garnered from life.

I burned in a delicious, new way. A way I liked. A way I wanted to chase. "Deal."

If I had been worried about that all consuming need of the second monster returning, there was none. Maybe in a deeper pit of me, but for now, in the light of day, she was Annabel. Chime waited for the sunset, but I was content here with the day. Pleased, warmed, _clean_ with it.

She looked a little unbalanced when she looked back at the microscope, and for a second I worried she might fall off her chair. I reached to steady her—another excuse to touch her—but she didn't need it, and I dropped my hand. She stared down the long tube at the final slide clicking into place. "Prophase." She said, and a small smile tugged at her lips.

_It is the beginning, _I agreed.

I just didn't know of what.


	7. Ring of Gyges

**Ring of Gyges**

**Teeny tiny twilight**

I was looking at a collection of nearly florescent electronics. I was contemplating if my contempt for them, would win over my desire to buy something easily recognizable.

Two aisles over, two fifteen-year-old girls were looking over and giggling, daring the other to come over and talk to me. I looked back for a moment, long enough to see where Alice was, but both of the girls ducked, giggling madly with the other. I sighed, feeling a vague sense of disappointment with society.

Alice was hidden behind the store rack, a bit too small to be seen from where the girls were standing. Plus, she _was _slouched against the wall, shaving a few extra inches off her already diminutive height.

"If you talk to him, I'll buy you the first season of _Scrubs_." A very tall thin one said with a playful fluttering of her eyelashes.

Her friend was not wooed. "No, _House—_the first season of _House—_and I'll talk to him," she whispered, sneaking a glance at the back of my head. _God, _the girl thought,_ Sarah is such a chicken. Why doesn't _she_ ask him out? She probably knows him, and he has a girlfriend or something. _She looked at me again, and then burst into giggles with her friend. _He _has_ to._

"We might want to leave soon," I murmured to Alice, while keeping tabs on the second girl's thoughts. I was cautious, lest she was to have a sudden rush of confidence.

"Well, I'm waiting on you," she said grumbled. The tone of bitter impatience troubled me.

Alice had been sulky all day, and became especially bad-tempered with me. Every time I asked her what was wrong though, she grumbled and distracted herself by categorizing everything she saw into a series of complex litanies . A car, for example, fell into colour, design, material, direction, and condition. The clothing of the driver fell into different categories. And not just clothes in general, oh no, _no._ All the unfashionable clothes were simply recognized by what year, or why they went out of style. The _fashionable _clothes though, had their own taxonomy! Sweaters and shirts with hoods were not even related. And _belts... _God, I couldn't listen to this anymore.

I pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and index finger. "Alice," I groaned, "have mercy."

She didn't smile at me, or do any of her other Alice-esq gestures, like playfully stick her tongue out; but she changed the direction of her thoughts to other inane, yet slightly more tolerable, paths. We were thinking about buttons now.

"The first button was made three thousand years ago," I added to her list of button trivia.

"I say it was a broach." There it was, the hint of a smile... and then it was gone again.

I frowned at her. I had asked her to come with me today, but that was to try and cheer her up. She had been so miserable looking when we were driving home, I thought that going out might help. I mean, she enjoyed shopping, and I was going into town anyway, so why not, if only to raise her spirits?

It took me a long, dense moment to finally get that she was upset with _me_. Only when her mood turned from glumly introspective to downright unhappy did I realize it.

Apparently the Edwardian's weren't quite as socially astute as history remembers them to be.

"Do you just want to go home?" I asked, still unsure as to why she was upset.

Alice picked up one of the shiny iPods that were secured to the table by a thick black wire. She inspected it with no real interest.

"No." Her voice was flat. She put the iPod back down in its cradle and sighed, turning away from me.

I sighed too. I had been a little excited about this trip, though I wouldn't admit to that now. I wanted to talk to someone, and Alice was the preferable candidate since she was the "sister" I felt closest to. And I wanted a woman's intuition—well, _opinion—_on Annabel.

Apparently, there would be no friendly chat today.

"Edward," Alice finally moaned. "God, just _buy_ one of them, all right?"

"I'm warring," I admitted with a half smile. My obsession with electronics wasn't as pronounced as Emmett's was, but it was still there. "A good MP3 player has better sound quality than these things. All iPods are terribly crafted clumps of barely audible machinery with a brand name rich enough to convince the general public that they are pretty." I scowled at it, resisting the urge to toss it carelessly, let the heavy black cord snap it roughly back into place.

"Then why is there even a choice?" Alice asked dryly. She sounded suddenly weary, as if time had taken its toll on her.

"Well...because it looks good," I admitted sheepishly.

The girls behind the aisle caught my attention. _This_ was why none of our family could stand being in public for any real length of time, Carlisle being the only exeption. Even Rosalie found the human devotion trying after the first few love notes.

The second girl—_Ashley—_had a sudden bout of confidence. "Okay, okay, I'm going to ask him," the second girl said. She took two steps, then fell into another fit of giggles and retreated again.

Alice was looking at her hands, still thinking about buttons, but now it was the buttons on Jasper's shirt, and she was getting wistful. '_Please Edward, just pick something, even if you return it tomorrow. I just want to go back home. You aren't the only one with admirers here.' _She shot a look at an employee who had just tried to price check the wrong side of the package for the third time in a row. He was too busy staring at Alice to even notice.

I shot her an apologetic look over my shoulder. _We'll leave soon, Alice, I promise. _I thought, but of course she didn't hear me.

I knew it sounded like a petty bout of indecision, but it was actually vitally important. There would be no point in even _being _in _Future Shop_ right now if not for Annabel.

I had watched her eyes light up at the look of the music player, and it had given me hope. What would her reaction be if I were to bring in my own tomorrow? If I slid it across the desk for her to search through?

My hope was that _she_ would initiate the conversation this time. And—something I hardly dared to think about, let alone hope—was that she might point out one of _my_ favourites and wonder about it; that she might listen to it and fall in love with it. She might look up at me with _that_ smile, the impossibly brilliant one that I grinned at just watching from the side. What would it feel like to be on the receiving end of it?

In reality, I suppose it was such a trivial thing. It was only a song, but I felt a rush of heedy anticipation at the idea. I played the scene over and over as to what I might say—what _she_ might say. I was thrilled by the idea of tomorrow. It was an entirely new concept for an immortal, considering our _today_ never really ended.

I grinned, feeling the difference of a day punctuated by variation. I no longer felt like a small acorn stuck on a great oak tree—never moving, never changing, and never carrying on with life. Now I was feeling the stirrings of a slight wind, a hopefulness that something—anything—might change.

But that was ridiculous. What was she going to do, bite me and turn me human? Give me another chance at life?

Hardly.

What did a fluttering stomach mean, other than this was new, and therefore a little exciting? That the difference between her mind, and the rest of the population was both refreshing and frustrating. Or the fact that I liked to watch her face, imagining what it would be like to disappear into the darkness of her eyes? I wondered what it would be like to just crawl inside her body, to just disappear in her...

I wasn't sure if that was macabre or romantic.

I realized that I had no choice but to pick an iPod; she might not be tempted to pick up a lesser-known brand of music player. It all boiled down to aesthetic value, I realized, with a vague feeling of disillusionment I couldn't quite pin on any particular thing.

Now secure with the decision to purchase an iPod, I needed to pick a colour. Looking at the wide range of colours to select from, I realized I was sadly lacking one important piece of information. I had no clue as to her colour preference. The iPod was essentially to please her, rather than me, and I wanted her to love it. What if I bought something calm when she wanted something bright and loud? Or the opposite, and she recognized the brightly coloured metal as tacky, as I did?

God, everything was so much simpler when it was just a silver Discman.

I was leaning towards the cheerful green one, but then figured that purple was a good divide between feminine and masculine—pretty, yet neutral enough to maintain most of my dignity.

Then I caught the elegant blue one.

I couldn't help it; it looked so distinct from the others. Perhaps it was the light to blame, but the blue metal seemed dark, the colour deeper than the others. Despite the fact that Annabel was a collection of warm browns and soft creams, I thought of her. It must have been the seeming casual way it seemed to sit in the box, so conspicuous despite the fact it should blend in perfectly. I grinned and called the sales boy over, and he unlocked the drawer that guarded the cheap metal, pulling out my choice.

I sighed, relieved, and began to listen for Alice's thoughts, to pin point her in the store. There was a dark humorous tenor to her voice.

Her humour didn't quite click with me until I caught sight of the second girl striding confidently towards me, her friend trying to watch without being too obvious. I had subconsciously been trying to block out the human deluge of thought to better concentrate on the task at hand. Trying to consider what the girl could think on principal when I didn't even understand her when she was sitting right beside me, when her face was open to my scrutiny.

"Hey," she called as I froze. She had the look of someone balancing on the line between being a confident adult with the remains of childhood insecurity. I was both amused and sympathetic towards her.

"Don't I know you?" she wondered, glancing back for a second to share a smug look with her friend, who was watching with rapt attention.

I cocked an eyebrow at her, amused by the line that seemed suited to women much older than herself. Or maybe it was the suggestive way she had asked it that made the line too mature for her. "I don't think so." I chuckled, then I looked up behind her at her friend, catching her eyes.

The girl gasped as I made eye contact and quickly ducked behind the shelf, giggling. Ashley, the girl who had approached me, turned quickly to see what I was looking at. The embarrassed spiel of her thoughts, coupled with her blush, made it clear she knew I was on to them. "Oh, okay, sorry. I thought I knew you," she said quickly, retreating swiftly, backing up even as she spoke.

I chuckled, and she turned and strode quickly to duck behind the shelf with her friend where they both erupted into embarrassed giggles.

They were still poking fun at the other as Alice and I walked out of the shop with my new purchase.

The atmosphere in the car as we drove towards home was unusually quiet, almost oppressively so.

Silence usually didn't bother me. I usually searched though the world for places of silence to ease my mind. This was different from that comfortable, healing solitude. This was the atmosphere assigned to those who had done something hurtful and, usually, stupid.

I felt a sudden swell of sadness. _I'm sorry,_ I thought in her direction. She didn't react, of course, but I hadn't expected her to. I felt my lips pulling down worriedly. What had I done to bothere Alice so much?

Alice was not at all like Rosalie, who looked for people with whom she could blow off steam. When it came to Alice, the only emotions she bottled up were the ones that might hurt someone; everything else was instantaneous and energetic. I wondered as I usually did, if this was an effect of loving an empath or if this was how she had always been.

"So, quite an eventful day," I joked. I had meant the little scene in the store, but I was reminded of the passionate way Annabel had said my name instead. I tried to subdue my grin.

"Sure was," she agreed tersely, and then turned the radio on.

I winced. This is alright, I tried to assure myself. It meant that Alice really wanted to have nothing to do with me at the moment, so it released me from the social obligation to ease the tense silence. The best thing I could do, it seemed, was to just wait until she was ready to talk. Despite this, I felt Alice's anger sit heavy in my chest, and it was hard to ignore. I hated to see her angry, even if it wasn't at me. The fact that it so obviously was frustrated me to no end. If Alice could just _tell_ me, then I might be able to make it better.

Alice and I were regularly a team. Ever since her appearance at our house almost sixty years ago, we had been close. So much so, that I had even gone to Carlisle once while the others had been gone hunting, to ask if there was such a thing as a platonic mate. I loved Alice, but I wanted nothing romantic or sensual from her. That was for Jasper, and I felt no jealousy towards him.

Carlisle had said he'd never heard of it before, and in that, despite his tact, I had my answer: No.

The lack of a label hadn't distressed me. The fact that I had looked around to find myself alone, had.

It was only a momentary pang of loneliness. I had no face that I saw when I closed my eyes or a body I longed to hold. It was just the recognition of the empty space next to me.

Speaking of empty, was the silence getting heavier? It had taken on a slightly serrated edge, and I didn't like the way it seemed to abrade against my skin with each passing moment.

I groaned, turning the music off. "Alice, if I get any more of your cold shoulder I might _actually_ get frost bite."

Silence.

"Or hypothermia," I grumbled.

Alice closed her eyes, concentrating on a new distraction.

_Ninety degrees, by thirty three degrees..._

She was taking the angles of random objects, and then using the measurements to locate various places across the globe, taking the language from that area and translating various poems, songs—anything—into that language. She had to continually keep changing what she translated to keep her mind occupied, because so many places spoke either English or French. Plus she kept hitting the ocean with an almost uncanny accuracy.

Underneath this though, I was catching repetition. '_Don't say it. You'll hurt him. Don't say it. You'll hurt him. Don't say...'_

I stayed silent, listening to this and worrying.

And trying to find something to fill the silence. She did not want to talk about it, and I could respect that. Would conversation harm her though? Maybe if she relaxed into a conversation, she might open up.

I had all the intention of putting out a neutral, yet not a blatantly obvious distraction. Something about Esme's new house renovation, or the hopeless way Rose was throwing out subtle hints that Emmett wasn't picking up about a necklace and Valentine's Day this year. _Hint-hint, nudge-nudge._

"So, what do you think of Annabel? She's not what I expected."

I had thought this was a pretty safe conversation _and_ it would help fill the raging curiosity. Not that Alice could give me any more information than I already knew, but it seemed to scratch the itch. I was finding that all other topics were beginning to pale in comparison to her. I felt a dull, itching boredom that I could not free myself of if I _wasn't_ talking about, or contemplating her. Though watching her through the minds of the others was usually enough to keep me happily occupied. Seeing her through their minds made it clear they had a less intense obsessession than I.

"_What do I think?_" Alice exploded, turning to stare at me. She finally met my eyes for more than a few seconds since school had ended. They burned with the fury she had been suppressing until now.

I winced, but I felt almost..._relieved_. The silence disappeared to be replaced with the heat of her anger, but the storm was welcome. I knew, like all storms, that it would pass, and then I could pick up after the wreckage. I could fix it.

"What I _think_ is that I'm tired of watching you kill her. I'm tired of seeing that look on your face after you drop her body, and I am so damn tired of seeing all these what ifs." Alice's small hands were crossed tightly over her chest, fists shaking against her ribs.

At first, I couldn't understand why the idea of the death of just another human would bother her so much. She saw Jasper kill someone biweekly. At that thought, a great tide of shame rolled over me, and I was horrified with myself. Why _shouldn't_ it upset her? This was a human life, and if we couldn't pull the significance of that from the statistic, we were merely a band of hypocrites impersonating the resolve of compassion. I was instantly sickened with myself.

I took the last hairpin turn and came up onto a great white house, almost perfeclty similar to all our other great white houses. The lights were on, but I didn't feel the warmth of invitation looking at it. It was Alice, though, who held my attention.

Her visions were spinning madly before her eyes. In more than half of them, I was standing above Annabel with red eyes, my face blank with shock before breaking into a strange look, almost empty, but filled with such a staggering degree of loss, that it couldn't just be the girl. The expression was so strange, I couldn't pin an emotion to it. They played out in the classroom with carnage around us, as if I had walked into a murder scene. In an alley as black as the moonless sky above us. In an unfamiliar place I had never been before, though it must have been an apartment I had never visited.

The last one haunted me most, because I was almost sure that this was her home that I had followed her to. How many times had I imagined following her home, not to hurt her, but to learn more about her? The was the home where I followed her?

It was impossibly painful to watch the way she fell limply to the floor, pale as death, her eyes still open. It horrified me to think that my face was the last thing she would have seen. There was nothing of her smile there. No fear, either.

She was gone.

"Ah," I managed, but it wasn't a sound of understanding. It was a groan of agony as painful as her scent, but this torture flared deeper than my throat. It chewed and smouldered around my lungs, turning my stomach. I could only imagine how the addition of her sweet blood would feel in combination with this feeling. The sweetness, the sickness, and the pain... I might as well be rotting from the inside out.

Alice started getting out of the car, calm now, though I heard the toneless defeat through her thoughts. '_Kill her or don't, but I don't want to see it anymore.'_

She got out of the car, letting me chew over her words and her visions. I turned the car off, but didn't move to get out. I didn't want to go into the house with her.

It took me a second to realize my lethargy had nothing to do with seeing Alice again before she completely calmed down, or the eyes of our family who had heard most of her accusations.

I did not even feel the nervous, churning desire to melt into the woods to hunt before tomorrow. The only responsible precaution I seemed to even have the pretence of. It wouldn't stave off the thirst for tomorrow, but it made me feel like I had even the barest amount of control. If I hunted, I imagined I would have just one more _inch_ of control. Only an inch, but that inch might be enough to save her life.

It was all in my imagination, craving for control which I wouldn't find inside my own skin and muscle.

The iPod, and the impossible, fantastic scenarios I had spun around it, for which I had been so excited about before, were suddenly disgusting to me. I threw it into the backseat angrily. What right did I have to endanger her for only the want of excitement? Was I really so egoistic a creature to imagine my amusement trumped life? Even a prostitute's life was worth more than this _game_.

_Plato's tale of the Ring of Gyges_ became tangled up in my thoughts. The man who found a ring that would make him invisible—absolutely free from consequence—had disregarded virtue and goodness for what he wanted.

I had no such ring, but I knew I could disappear just as easily. When someone was that self-seeking, and given the opportunity, was there anything that would stop that person from taking what they wanted, everyone else be damned? I knew my track record, and I was sure that spoke louder than any allegory on the planet. Nothing had stopped me from killing all those people so many years ago, not even Carlisle. Why should this be different?

I ran my hands through my hair, and then let them drop back into my lap as I stared up at the roof of the car. It wasn't even six o'clock yet and it was already dark. I imagined that I could see _through_ the roof, see all the stars in the sky in that wide expanse of black. Too wide, it seemed, for this earth.

I was thinking about stars when I pushed my key back into the ignition.

I'm not sure how long I had sat in my car thinking, but I heard Alice, no longer angry, but horrified with herself. _'No, Edward, I didn't mean it!'_

I sped up and left her voice behind, following the path of the stars across the sky.

Who needs a ring?

"ID."

I blinked, partially amused at the large man standing in front of the door I sought entrance to.

I had thought this town was too derelict to even have the thought of a bouncer, but I seemed to have been mistaken.

The man watched me with hazel eyes that were more brown than green, and thick, black brows that crawled across his forehead. They gave his face the unfortunate resemblance of a Neanderthal. Despite this, his eyes had the air of experience. He couldn't be older than thirty, and yet he had three scars on his left arm alone.

I watched him silently, deciding how stubborn he was going to be. As if he knew I was sizing him up, he crossed his large arms in a way that was obviously supposed to be menacing. I smiled.

I wasn't twenty-one. I would never _be_ twenty-one, and I had nothing _saying_ I was twenty-one. I had nothing in the way of plastic to show him. Not a recent enough one, at least. Jasper was getting new ones for us at the moment. I had the feeling I would be back again after tonight. It wouldn't do to show him two different looking ID s, now would it?

If worse came to worst, and he couldn't be bribed, I would find another way in. _Well_, I thought with weary sarcasm, _it wouldn't be much of a night if I didn't knock down a few walls_. Not that I really would. I could only imagine Esme's face if I ever confessed to that.

"Insurance Card, Driver's License, senior citizens card—whatever—but I need an ID to let you in," he grunted at me, his voice gravelly.

I didn't have ID, but I did have something just as good.

I pulled out my wallet.

I let my lips slide into an easy I-wont-tell-if-you-don't smile, maintaining eye contact. This was an expression I had perfected over my many years of bribery. The corners of my mouth lifted a little so as not to look too cocky, but to soften my face enough to make myself less intimidating. My head bowed to make them lean into me a little to catch the low words I would say.

"What if we happened to strike a deal?"

He looked interested, one of his thick eyebrows cocking up at me.

I felt my smile turn into something a little darker, and then the wind changed, and my throat tightened around the sudden flame.

I already knew the voice before she spoke.

"The hell is going on here?"

We both straightened, though I managed to look vastly less guilty, even as I inconspicuously slid my wallet into the back pocket of my jeans. "Why, hello." I took one look at her, and then I was laughing.

Annabel—no, she was Chime here—had her arms crossed tightly across her chest, glaring furiously between the Neanderthal and myself. The large man, standing behind me now since I had turned to face Chime wholly, was uncomfortable with her anger. He had been hoping to ask her for a favour tonight, but he was beginning to think better of it. I didn't delve to deeply, I didn't want specifics.

Actually, though I had held no real quarrel with him—nothing to make me dislike him _specifically—_I suddenly hated him. Enough that I tasted something metallic on my tongue, and that my throat felt tight. The image of my _accidentally _falling backwards into him and putting my elbow through his skull became enormously entertaining. I grinned.

Chime stormed up the steps in a red uniform with the local _Food 4 less _grocery store logo written across her left breast and grabbed a handful of my sleeve, not actually touching my skin.

I felt a vague sense of disappointment at this. I could feel my mood lightening, the darkness of a few moments ago gaining a blithe edge now that I was beside her. I didn't breathe yet, not wanting to taint the moment quite so soon.

She turned us so we were facing the last of the _Homo sapiens neanderthalensis_ species. "Were you going to let his kid in, Greg?" Her voice was furious, though she was trying very hard to control it through clenched teeth.

His thoughts contradicted her immediately. _Adam,_ he thought in a knee jerk reaction, but he was not upset with her slip, and I wondered why. "Looking for ID, actually. He a friend of yours?"

Chime and I looked at each other, me looking for her to either agree or disagree, while she studied me with a suddenly calculating look. She quickly looked back at Adam. Without her eyes, I was robbed of the only glance I had into her mind, no matter how opaque it was.

I watched the side of her face, and perhaps it was because I only had a partial view, but her anger seemed to have drained into a firm seriousness.

"Take a good look at him," she said suddenly, her voice much more calm.

Adam looked, but only to let her know he was taking this seriously. _I'm not going to forget a kid who looks like this,_ he thought, but he categorized my features. Apparently, I have Irish hair.

"I don't care if he shows you a card tomorrow that says he's eighteen, or twenty-one, or thirty-five. He. Is. Seventeen." She enunciated the words distinctly in a clipped voice, turning my age into two distinct words.

She turned to look at me now, her eyes blazing with the fury she was unsuccessfully trying to contain. Her eyes showed _everything_, I realized with a sense of awe.

"And if I catch him in the bar, or _anywhere_ around here, I will, _legitimately,_ kick his ass." She crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing the exposed skin.

I burst into laughter again.

It wasn't because of the way she had poked the air with an invisible pin when she had said _legitimately_, or even that she had said it at all, thrown haphazardly into the sentence like that. Oh no, _no._ It had been the absolutely serious way she had threatened me.

"Hey, I really wouldn't," Adam said in a suddenly careful voice, as if we were talking around a sleeping bear rather than a riled kitten. He looked at Chime, who did not look impressed. _'This sure as hell isn't helping her Monday mood.'_ He watched her shiver once as a strong wind cracked at his coat.

This Monday mood he thought about interested me greatly. I couldn't very well ask him about it, though. So when Chime made to drag me away down the steps to the sidewalk, I let her.

"Come here," she growled, taking back the fisted sleeve she had dropped while she had been gesturing in her speech. I let her pull me down the stairs, still chuckling, though slowly regaining my composure.

She pulled me to the corner of the building, giving us some privacy beside an ally where an old green car was parked. She turned, took two deep breaths, and then levelled a completely calm look at me.

I felt a brief bout of disappointment at his. _Let me see you_. I recognized my obsession with her anger had less to do with the emotion itself, and more with the loss of control over her careful mask. I liked seeing her eyes flash with something that was hot and strong, and though I knew almost nothing of her, I thought it was the barest hint of her soul rising in a fit of passion to face me head on.

God, had I always been this impractically romantic? I considered the fitful obsessing I had been doing all day, and figured that this might just be an extension of that.

"Edward," the carefully masked Annabel asked, "are we friends?"

I balked. "If this is about the promise—"

"Are we friends, yes or no?" Then she laughed quietly at my troubled expression, because, well, no, we weren't really friends. She was still smiling even as I tried rolling around tactful words on my tongue like, _acquaintance _and _contact. _

"Look," she said after a second of my pained silence, and I found myself smiling sheepishly along with the amusement in her voice. "I won't cry if you say no. I have a strict no stalking policy, too, if that makes you feel any better." She winked playfully.

"Much." I tried to imagine what it would be like if Chime stalked me.

The idea was appealing.

I considered her again as I pulled in a painful breath of air. Somewhere on a faint horizon—east of here—I remembered that there was anger and sadness, and a distrust that stripped me of my confidence. Here, though, I was happy. And so maybe that was why all the carefully thought out words I had been rolling around in my mouth before were forgotten.

"Friends is...apt, I suppose," I said easily, then smiled as if it meant nothing to me that she could sew strange words onto my tongue. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end in an unfamiliar way.

She tried to smile. "I dragged that out of you, didn't I?"

"No," I assured her. Actually, I had hesitated because it suddenly seemed far too broad. I wanted something narrower, I supposed, like _good_ friend, or, I don't know, _boyfriend_.

I tried to imagine that and failed. There was nothing about me that could possibly appeal to her. Not in this life, anyway. I could settle for lover, though. I had the proper equipment for that.

Her lips pulled up again, though this time into only a semblance of a smile. Her eyes carried a deep line of concern. "Then as one friend to another, Edward, _please,_ don't come back_._"

I chuckled at her, though I lingered on her pleading expression, the liquescent, churning of concern in her eyes. "Actually, Chime, friends invitefriends_ back_."

She glanced to her left and then down at her feet. A faint breeze brushed against my back, and I realized that if I stood a little closer to her, I would be able to shelter her from the wind.

But that would be no good, because it would also give me the proximity I needed to lift her chin with my finger, to find those eyes that shifted through so many emotions. They were sad now, I was sure. The thought alone was almost enough to propel me forward. For what, I had no clue. I could be no sense of comfort for her. It was almost as impossible as the thought of her belonging to me.

"I'm not joking. _Please, _Edward,just listen_._" She hesitated, not looking up at me, though I could see her eyebrows come together, as if there was something very perplexing at our feet. "I didn't have any friends to stand in my way when I started to slide. And I don't know, maybe this isn't the same, but I promise you, _this_ is not what you want."

"How do you know?" I challenged, though my voice was curious rather than defiant.

Her eyes snapped up, staring into my eyes with her own stubbornness as she steadied her stance. Her chin raised fractionally, shoulder's squaring. She looked for all the world like she was actually intending to keep me from going any further, as if this petite figure might just physically wrestle me back into my car.

I wanted to laugh, but instead I felt a growing awe for her.

_Brave_.

The word came out of nowhere but was perfectly fitting in this moment. I saw it in the fierce protective light in her eyes. It was the kind of intensity that was rare in humans, who were much more comfortable spending their days in light moods, because every great height of happiness came with a tall fall.

Her mouth suddenly started making a strange fast _click-click-click_ing noise muffled slightly by her lips. I took in her arms crossed tightly against her chest, her cheeks whipped red by the wind, and realized the strange clicking was her _teeth. _

"Edward, for the love of God, go home before I lose a toe."

I stared at her. "Why are you wearing a t-shirt in January?" I shrugged out of my coat.

"Why are you still _here_?" The wind snapped at her, and she muttered a low curse under her breath. It was strange, but the foul word shocked me. Intellectually, I knew that she was in no way innocent, but looking at her blush, I would have easily believed her virtuous. I suddenly wondered how she got here, to this terrible place.

My arm was extended with the coat, but she didn't look like she was going to take it. I wondered how warm my car was, and then remembered something. "Oh! I have something for you." I folded my coat over my arm in case she decided she wanted it in a moment.

She glared. "Go away." She was outright shivering now, and I was more desperate to get her warm than anything else.

I chuckled, nervously watching her frame shake. "I'm serious, it's in my car."

"I'm sure. Believe it or not, I've heard this line before."

"Which is, by the way, toasty warm." I continued, ignoring her with a grin. My teeth were clenched behind the smile, the idea knocking the virtuous blushing girl out of my head. _Prostitute_, I thought scornfully.

The temperature of the car was a lie, but I was sure with the heat cranked it would warm up quickly enough. I imagined her scent circulating through the vents, clinging to the material stubbornly, and then shuddered at the thought.

But if I could get her warm, maybe she wouldn't be so angry. Maybe I could ease her, tell her what I wanted to say, and see how she reacted to the proposition.

She gave me a withering look. I sighed, and walked back to my car myself to quickly grab the iPod from the backseat where I had carelessly tossed it, too angry and hurt to care about the damage I might cause the thing. When I turned, she was starting towards the building with all its promised warmth fogging the windows. There were more people coming now, barely legal kids getting a cheap drink at a cheap bar.

She turned back for a second to make sure I was, in fact, leaving as she had supposed.

I smiled wanly at her, the iPod I had spent more time considering for her than myself, but not solely because I wanted her attention. I realized now, it had been _for_ her the entire time. I watched her from my car, wondering if she would believe that I hadn't come tonight to pick her up. I had wanted to see her, yes; I had wanted to take her somewhere, a restaurant perhaps, to apologize for my lewd behaviour last week. Though, considering her now, I would probably take her again, if I had been given the chance, the foul creature that I was.

I knew I had come looking for something specific, though, and it went past all of these surface wants. I think I just wanted to see her, I realized, as I sat in the driver's seat. I had just wanted to be sure she was whole and real in this strange world where someone like she and I could exist at once.

What a strange phenomenon.

I took one last look at her in her bright red uniform—startling against the dull weather worn brick and black sky—to ground myself again, and then pulled away from the curb and headed east.


	8. My lady

_I knew I had come looking for something specific, though, and it went past all of these surface wants. I think I just wanted to see her, I realized, as I sat in the driver's seat. I had just wanted to be sure she was whole and real in this strange world where someone like she and I could exist at once._

_What a strange phenomenon. _

_I took one last look at her in her bright red uniform__耀__tartling against the dull weather worn brick and black sky__葉__o ground myself again, and then pulled away from the curb and headed east._

**My Lady**

**Teeny Tiny Twilight**

It was days like today that I almost hated Carlisle for having condemned me to this life. Almost.

I continued my torture ritual on the old, now dilapidated Christmas tree that I myself had heaved into the forest the day after Christmas. It looked the same as it had three weeks ago, too cold for the needles to lose too much water. One side was flattened, and as I plucked the smooth, green needles from the rough wood of the tree, they felt smooth against my hand. A cool caress, though I found no comfort in the touch.

It had begun as a simple plucking of individual pine needles from the branches曜ust out of boredom as my mind wandered傭ut somewhere along the way I started a little childish chanting game.

"She hates me. She hates me not. She hates me..."

It was not a good day. It would not be a good night, and I hated that I knew this. I hated that I knew that the days were too long and the nights were useless. Most of all though, I hated that this tree solidified my misery. Concrete evidence that what I felt now was the truth.

By this point in the year, I've usually forced amnesia on myself, blanking the images of all seven of us on the floor, forty-two presents wrapped in bright cheerful wrapping paper. Six for each of us, naturally.

I'm not a miser. I don't begrudge gift giving, sentiments of love, or family bonding over a holiday that lost its meaning during the industrial revolution. Probably even before then.

The consider the image, though, of sitting on the floor watching everyone else lean against someone, twine their fingers together with another, or look at their significant other with such adoration for the thoughtfulness of knowing what they wanted. Now imagine being alone. Christmas was a lonely place to be as a seventh wheel.

On Christmas, I sat and faked happy while Jasper did his best to ignore me. He, like the rest of our family, had become accustomed to my mood. My greatest gift to them in the season was to smile and feign the same joy as the rest of them. Even as Jasper occasionally made little sounds to let everyone else know I was approaching near suicidal levels of misery.

"She hates me.I stopped on the last needle of the branch. Chime's anger seemed to have seeped into the fauna. I pushed my thumb against where the branch met the trunk, and I watched as it collapsed under the most gentle of touches. It turned from wood to mulch effortlessly, destroyed by barely a caress. I started a new branch with clenched teeth. It occurred to me that if I changed the name of the game just a little, I'd be loved, and perhaps less frustrated.

As I came home the night before, it seemed as though the weight of the Christmas season had again descended on us. No, worse than Christmas, somehow. It seemed more like I had been cut from all my ties, all the reasons for being seemed...dimmed. Like trying to look through a brilliant light to see a much duller one.

Alice had been so sorry that I could not be angry with her. That could have been Jasper's doing though. His want to please her was felt so deeply, he subconsciously reached his gift out. Calming tense air, bringing joy where there would otherwise be anger. Gratifying her no matter the cost. Love was such a strange phenomenon sometimes, neither perfect virtue nor absolute vice.

There was no real reason to have the reoccurring response to the holiday season. There were no decorations hanging. The mistletoe, no longer fresh, had been long since tossed with the tree. Despite this, the same sense of being the extra in a house full of happy, absolutely in love couples, returned.

The moment I had left Chime, I had wanted to return. I wasn't sure that this could be explained away by the idea of the after affects of physical love. Shouldn't it be fading, rather than growing in strength? Besides, when had Tanya ever experienced this? Where were the stories of Vampires plagued with remorse over the humans they killed during copulation?

There were none.

No, I was starting to understand that this might be some long buried instinct from my human life預 protective instinct.

It was not particularly new. Decades ago, with the rebellion against the restraint required to exist as a vegetarian, I had left with the romantic idea of protecting the innocent. I could drink human blood without being a monster. I soon learned that a hero in a black cloak always becomes the villian.

What was different from that dark period of my life was where my attention was directed. I did not focus so much on the monsters as I now did the victims. Or rather, victim, since the girl seemed to be the only human I was particularly concerned with.

The furry I felt when Michael thought about touching her? Protective. The intense agony I rarely dwelt on for its intensity at the thought of her body being used by others? Definitely protective. The rage I endured because she placed herself there, night after night? Well, that one was a much more natural response to stupidity.

I was trying to live as a hero again, but not by murdering the guilty; rather, I was protecting the weak. It suddenly made sense, that desire to step before the harsh thoughts of Lauren Mallory and Annabel. Or to warn her of the deceptive friendship in Jessica Stanley. It was all my long buried human instincts rising to meet her very obvious vulnerability with strength.

She had grabbed my attention as a burning fire in my throat and kept it with a silent mind with impossibly tempting puzzles to solve. She had enticed my more intrepid side with her obvious frailty through the translucence of her skin, and the glass of her bones.

Then there was the damn stubbornness that was born from her unending bravery.

I could almost smile thinking about the way she had determinedly marched through the parking lot to where I stood. I could remember envious stares of the male population of Marshal Metropolitan High School as they watched Annabel stride towards me, some thing I thought might be anger fuelling her brisk pace. I felt the same smug grin that I had tried to suppress trying again to break across my face at the memory alone.

The look of the mistrust in her dark eyes had bothered me more than the strange fluttering in my stomach as she approached. I wondered if she was still angry, even as I saw the strange mischievous flash in her light her face. A light that seemed to me, strangely nocturnal. This flame, capering in the both opaque and startlingly clear waters of her eyes, seemed to be more like Chime than Annabel. It was more night than day.

"Edward,she called. She was trying very hard to sound pleasant, to not draw attention to ourselves, though that was impossible. All eyes were on her. The effect of affability was spoiled by the undertones of the anger clear in her voice. I nearly laughed seeing it in her narrowed eyes aswell.

Despite the fact that I was, without a doubt, in trouble with her, I'd had to press my lips together to keep from smiling. Her anger was endearing. I liked watching the mask slip, the warmth of the passion that bubbled up to take its place.

"Annabel,I murmured softly, soothingly, 塗ow are your toes?"

I'd gotten some strange looks from my family for that, but it was so easy to ignore them. She seemed to consume the whole of my conscious mind. Between the battle to breath normally through my mouth, the constant curiosity of her silent mind that kept my own searching her face for infinitesimal changes that might suggest the direction of her thoughts, and then the amazing way her hips moved unconsciously as she walked was alone enough to drive every rational thought from me. Forcibly.

"Oh, they've turned a lovely shade of black, thank you,she growled, trying to smile around clenched teeth. I wanted to laugh again watching that thread bare smile. She was a terrible liar.

Her sharp eyes watched my face cautiously as she closed the distance between us. I saw a piece of paper in her hand, the one she had been trying to hide. I stopped breathing as she stepped close enough to clap her hand against my back with more force than I was expecting. Her hand smoothed down my back slightly afterwards.

Emmett moved to get a better look at the note she had stuck to my back at the same moment she moved away. The sudden distance between our bodies made me feel colder, her body heat having warmed me marginally. It was enough for me to notice, and I missed it the moment it was gone.

Jasper joined Emmett's view point, and they both tried to hold back their laughter. Annabel suppressed her own smile watching them, then she started to back away, her smile really happy as she waved goodbye. 鉄ee you in class."

I nodded, and waited until she disappearing into the school before I reached behind me to pull off the note.

_**I need a girlfriend**_

_'Oh,'_ Emmett thought with a wide grin, _'I _like_ her, Eddie.'_

I smiled widely too. I was so caught up in the memory it was a strange shock to remember where I was.

I looked down now and could see how many needles were left on the branch I was on. Two-hundred-and-forty-four.

She hates me.

I growled and ripped off a huge section of the tree and then hurled it into the trees. It cracked against another tree, thin, dry branches snapping in delicate little pops.

I hesitated for a moment, looking off at the sky that was just starting to set葉he stars not quite visible in the blue預nd felt the folded square of her note in my pocket. Playful, as if I was one of her kind, like a joke between friends. I looked at the deep finger marks from where I had torn at the wood傭earing an uncanny resemblance to the claw marks of some savage beast葉hrough the thick centre of the tree.

I hesitated, looking at all the other trees in this forest. I could decimate them in a touch. I looked again at the marks in the tree, and then I left to find more durable company.

When I walked into the huge white house, Rosalie and Emmett were on the couch. Rose was curled up in his lap, playing with his fingers.

"God, even this one is grinned and then kissed his pinky finger.

Emmett grinned back. 添ou know what they say about big hands.

Rosalie laughed, a sound that resonated deep in her throat, almost a playful growl. 泥on't I know it, Baby.

I rolled my eyes, uncomfortable by their obvious display of affection. 敵et a room,I growled under my breath, and then darted up the stairs to my room.

I could still hear then murmuring to each other, so I flicked on some music. It wouldn't drown them out溶ot completely傭ut it was a distraction.

Once there though, I realized there really was nothing to do. I felt tug, a want to be some other place but here. So I started to reorganize my CDs as a distraction. A Mundane talk, but not mind numbing. I liked looking back over the years, each piece of music stood out to me like a date in a journal. There were always memories in music. Usually, it was a good distraction. Today it wasn't.

Not because the memories of the years spent gathering this music was unwelcome, but the idea of music itself.

I had given Annabel the damned iPod after agonizing over it the night before when I had known it was waiting in the back seat for morning. It was a reminder that Chime had walked away謡illingly擁nto the arms of other men. I had thought, and worried, and tortured myself imagining scenarios in which she didn't come to school the next day. These ranged from being beaten and left in a ditch somewhere, all the way to laying dismembered in a dumpster in a rotting alley.

I was so afraid that it would turn into one of Alice's dark visions that I could not go to her, though I desperately wanted to. Even if I just to followed her, just to check on her quickly. If I got too close, if she _was_ hurt, her blood would be open to the air. The idea haunted me enough that I paced my room, terrified that she would spend her night in the dumpster thanks to one of the sadistic human predators that roamed the streets, yet I was more terrified still that_ I_ might be the one to put her there.

It was selfish, but the idea of _my_ taking her life was almost more terrifying than just the general idea of her dying. I was so many thousands of times stronger than she could ever be, and the idea of her fragile silk skin, her bones as frail in my hands as thin glass, _breaking_ because of me...It was horrifying. The idea of another _human_ taking her life, was both terrifying and infuriating beyond comprehension. I was so angry I'd been struck into absolute stillness, muscles locked against the rage; the feeling so thick it imitated something of the taste of blood on my tongue耀harp, metallic傭ut without the accompanying sweetness.

No, if any human hurt her, they had better pray that someone else should find them before I did.

_But she _had_ been in school, _I reminded myself, _and she _had_ been fine and whole. _Once I started to agonize over her though, I couldn't seem to stop.

It was just as few hours after school ended, and the sky was beginning to darken. She could be out there now. Someone who wanted to hurt her溶ot even knowing who she was洋ight be on his way. Perhaps already held her.

I stopped, my hand tightening, just fractionally, around the case I was holding. I wasn't even sure which one at the moment, my mind went blank with a strange combination of rage and dread. A spider web of cracks raced across the plastic cover where my thumb was pressed just a little too tightly. I hardly noticed.

If I'd had a heart beat, it would have been racing now.

So I moved backwards, forcing myself to sit. Concentrating on what I did was good. It meant I wouldn't do something stupid. Something thoughtless.

Like running to find her.

Logically, I knew she was not my responsibility. _Logically_, I knew she had probably lived this life long enough to have a grasp of who was dangerous and who was not耀he was smart. She would see that.

Emotionally, I was a wreak. She was not my responsibility, and yet I couldn't stop thinking about her. I hated that she probably did have enough experience on the street to have been hurt before. I hated that she had been touched at all in _that_ way, though I had become one of those hands.

I tried very hard to push away the feeling. If she didn't deserve my rage預nd she must not, because I felt none directed towards her though she was the one to place herself in such situations葉hen she should deserve none of my fear. She was so shockingly virtuous though, to be playing such a corrupt role. She was essentially good, kind, and surprisingly sensitive to the threats posed to others. Maybe that was the distinction for me. She seemed to have none of the skills necessary for protecting herself on the street.

Again, it was protective instinct.

Even today, as she had raged at me for breaking her rules, I could see her concern rather than the anger of a thick-skinned, street-wise prostitute.

God, _her_ _rules_. What prostitute had rules, other than the obvious no murder, no rape, no abuse?

"You're a minor,"she had accused.

"So are hadn't mattered to her. She didn't see herself as the victim, or wouldn't see herself that way. I wasn't sure yet which one it was.

The second rule I had broken耀omething I had never considered might offend her morals揺ad been that I was 'innocent'. Virtuous. Virginal. She had _known_ I was new to the corporeal world of pleasures in the most embarrassing way. She had tried to tiptoe delicately around it, but I hadn't let it go.

"Well,she looked reluctant. I narrowed my eyes, waiting. She had inhaled a deeply, and then seemed to force it all out in one breath. 添ou finished really fast.I raised an eyebrow, and she had ducked her head, smiling a little. 鄭nd your technique was...lacking."

"Lacking?I'd deadpanned. We were in the hallway, alone and far enough away from the babble of the cafeteria that I was sure none of my family could hear this. Nonetheless, I felt like I had failed her as a lover.

_Lacking_.

"Lacking experience,she had added quickly. 添ou're well hung, if that makes you feel then she'd blushed a little, trying to look blase about the frankness of her statement, and not quite succeeding. She'd turned away quickly, to hide the both painfully alluring, and somehow very beautiful blush as it spread across her cheeks.

"Much,I agreed sarcastically.

Despite the fact I was still more than mildly offended耀o I was _naive_ not _lacking, _the difference being naivety could be easily remedied悠'd had to restrain my laughter at her. She played a role, just as much as our family did.

The more I thought about it though, the more embarrassed I had become. That first night...I'd had no thought of her pleasure. The forces that had driven me to her were purely selfish. I'd wanted her body, and then her life.

If I had been _better_, maybe she would not be so reluctant.

I couldn't even think about this.

I pulled in a deep breath, looking at the CD that was now crushed into plastic splinters in my hands. The air felt strangely stale when it wasn't laced with fire.

There was a quiet knock on my door, and I looked up despite the familiarity of the thoughts.

"Come in, Alice."

"Hey,she said, dancing in with a bright smile, ignoring my sullen expression. 展hat do you want to do after you get back? If you ask _really_ nicely, I'll bet Jasper can be coerced into playing a little grinned, one naturally thin eyebrow raised expectantly at me.

"Get back? Alice, where am I _going_?I asked, though I had an inkling. The same pull as last night to just see the girl. Just know she continued to exist. But had I yet really resolved myself? There was a thin, but growing more pronounced, feeling of fluttering anxiousness in my chest.

Alice raised a delicate eyebrow at me, 摘dward, I already see you going to her. Don't pretend you haven't decided yet."

"I hadn't...not really.I looked away, ashamed of this. It was embarrassing, this sudden fixation on what the others simply considered a human. Chime shouldn't have kept my attention for as long as she had. She was different though, and, unlike the others, I had no other distractions to dissuade my interest.

The others were consumed with their other half. Their days were more or less as monotonous, as invariable as my own, but it never seemed that way to them. I had nothing to concentrate on so wholly, so the days stood out to me more than to the others.

This girl was different, and after eighty years of the sameness, even such a small change would become central to me. What was worse was that she was an absolute mystery to me. Even her name揺er real one謡as unknown. Her past, her real life...she seemed as mythological to me as I my kind must seem to humans. There seemed to be nothing concrete to hold her in this reality.

I hesitated before looking back at Alice. She watched me contemplatively. 摘verything is changing around you. Something big is happening,she finally murmured.

I leaned back, smirking. 展ould you like a crystal ball, Alice? A circus tent maybe?"

Alice's serious expression melted, and she stuck her tongue out at me.

I smiled a little, and then the worry plagued me again. 鼎an you see...I hesitated, not quite knowing how to ask her.

Alice nodded. 鉄he's fine."

"And later?"

She hesitated, 的 think so. And about what I said last night...that really wasn't fair. There were good visions too, Edward. _Better_ ones."

I wasn't sure I could trust that. Not when I could barely trust myself. 典hank you,I murmured quietly.

Her hope was not something I was particularly sure I should take with me. Leaving though, I thought I was just a little hopeful.

When I arrived at the worn building, the lights on and music thrumming with the rhythmic bass of a fast song, I wasn't quite sure what to do.

Adam, the thick bouncer from the night before, was waiting on the steps.

There were other ways to get around him. This building must have other doors, and if not, at least a window. I'll bet I could still bribe him. Everyone had a folding price, and without Chime standing nearby, he'd probably feel less guilty for taking it.

But then what? Should I wait for her in the building? The first time I had met her, she had been standing outside in the cold. Maybe that was where she would be tonight.

Then I no longer needed to make the decision, because there she was, getting off a city bus at the end of the street.

She stepped off in clothing that, while not suitable for the temperature, wasn't wholly ridiculous. She wore a fluttery skirt and a tight white blouse. The picture of deceptive innocence.

Immediately, as if chastising her for her lack of coat, the wind snapped at her and her hair lifted to swirl in the wind before coming back down.

I turned the heat up in my car. Then realized I would need to get out and drag her back here for her to benefit at all from it. I turned the engine off, the heat that I had been previously running for her, just in case, still warmed the car. When I stepped out of the car, I felt the chill of the cold before my skin quickly adjusted to the temperature.

She hadn't seen me yet. She struggled to keep her hair that was tangling in the wind out of her face. I came up beside her and laid my almost warm coat across her shoulders.

She jumped , spinning to face me, and the motion sent a current of slightly warmer air towards me. I hesitated until it passed before taking a breath.

Instantly, my muscles clenched, my body thrilling with the expectation of a hunt that I would not allow. I burned for it.

Her face went from shock, to something akin to relief as she recognized me, and then irritation as she realized where we were.

"You looked cold.

She had looked like she was about to say something not quite nice, but then blew a long breath out instead, huffing her hair away from her face.

"Look,she started, pulling my coat around her a little tighter. I smiled. She took another deep breath, and I wondered if she was really struggling to compose herself. She didn't look angry anymore. 添ou have the valiant knight on a noble steed bit down. That really is great for you, you'll make a princess happy hesitated, pulling the jacket closer to her for one more second, and then pulling it off, and handing it back. 的f you haven't noticed though, I'm not exactly waving a handkerchief at you, so thanks, but no thanks."

I hesitated before taking the jacket back, but then she shook it at me and I realized揺owever much I was loathed to admit it悠 couldn't just let her stand there holding it. I considered folding it over my arm, but put it on instead, feeling the heat of her body cling to the material. I took a deep breath of her scent.

I was beginning to understand another piece of Chime. She didn't like to show weakness.

So as she started towards the building, I tagged along beside her. 擢ine. Duly noted. You are not the princess.I let that sit, waiting for her to take the bait. She didn't right away, so I continued. 釘ut what if you're something else?"

Her shoulders slumped suddenly. 徹h God, I'm the dragon,she sounded dismayed by this concept. I was baffled by the leap. Why would she be the dragon? Did she usually go off to plunder villages and wreak havoc?

I considered the mayhem she brought about in my own life and laughed.

A little too loudly, apparently. The sound caught Adam's attention. He watched us謡ell me蓉ntrustingly. There was a protective edge to his thoughts. Not possessive, but more...paternal almost. Maybe fraternal was the better word洋ore like a brother than a father.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized there was nothing sexual about the way he watched her. Last night even, he had not been irritated that I knew her, only becoming upset when he realized that _I_ made her angry.

I hardly dared to hope that maybe that was one less bed she shared.

Suddenly, I liked him a little bit more.

"No, you're not the dragon,I assured her, still amused.

She finally turned a little to face me, 典hen I'm..."

I hesitated. I couldn't quite deny the comfort she had around her here, like a monarch ruling a throne. 添ou're the Queen.I smiled at the thought.

"Which is still pretty much a princess."

"No,I corrected her, a sudden inspiration striking me. 典he Queen doesn't need saving...but maybe she wouldn't mind a little help now and then.I smiled innocently. _Just take it. Take the bait. _

She was staring at me with her dark, opaque eyes again. They were unreadable as she searched my face for something. I had no idea what she was looking for, and so I had no idea what to hide. I felt suddenly vulnerable to her gaze.

"Queen,she repeated. A smile pulled her lips up, and it nearly stole my breath. Her smile changed her whole face.

She _was_ pretty, I wouldn't deny that. There was just something about her that took her face from simply interesting to look at, to pretty in a strange, mesmerizing way.

But when she smiled...

Her eyes, just a little too big for her face, creased around the corners, and her high cheek bones, coupled with her smile, brought out the faint blush on her cheeks. Her teeth were white against her full red lips, chapped from the cold.

_She was beautiful_, I realized with a start. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen the depth of it until now, when that brilliant beaming smile was directed at me, but now,_ oh_ how I did now.

"I like it,she decided, the smile fading, but my epiphany on the degree of her loveliness did not. She raised her chin a fraction, and then started to strut royally down the side walk.

"Edward, my boy?she asked, and I felt a shot of warmth tingle down my bones.

_Her boy_, it was a joke, I realized, playing on her new title, but the idea made me shiver. Her boy. Her _man_. For the length of one second, it didn't even matter what I was, not when I was hers. Hell, if she so pleased, I'd be her Vampire King.

"Your Majesty?

She laughed a little, and my head spun, heady with the sound in my ears. This was not protective. I should not feel this way if I was simply protective. I didn't have the concentration to deliberate on both the feelings she enticed and the consideration on why they were wrong, so I chose the more pleasurable of the two.

Her.

"I now direct you back to whence you came,she said, still in a humorously haughty tone.

Not her Vampire King then, if I was being sent away so soon. 的 must decline your request, my Lady.I bowed a little, to hide my suddenly too wide smile.

_My Lady _sounded almost better than _Her Boy._ I shivered at the thought.

Maybe it was the concept of _Mine, _that was so appealing.

She stopped. 滴ey!Her full lips turned down. 的'm queen, you have to listen to me."

Adam, who had been curiously watching Chime's Royal Strut down the walk, called, 釘ossy doesn't mean royal blood!"

She blushed, though that may have been the wind whipping at her cheeks. I wasn't close enough to feel her skin warm to be sure. 哲o, you just lack instruction, Jack,she snapped back.

Again, she had gotten the name wrong, and again Adam wasn't concerned by it. She strutted up the stairs, skirt fluttering lightly, and then stopped in a dignified way before the large bouncer. 敵ood Sir Knight, may I pass?"

Adam bowed low and stepped out of her way. 徹f course, m' was grinning, the greenish hue in his eyes more apparent than the brown in that moment, especially under his thick black brows.

Now that I was beginning to see their comradeship for what it was rather than a sexual bond, I wasn't so angry. Not even when he called her his lady, because even in his voice, the humour dispelled the notion of possession.

I stepped up揺opefully葉rying to gain entrance without a scene.

Adam straightened, rising to his full height just an inch or so shorter than I. He gave me an accusing look. 鉄quire."

"Damn.I sighed, but I didn't leave to find another way in. I was certain, if Chime tried to leave, she would use this main door. Besides, if this Adam knew her so well, maybe he might know something useful.

Her name, maybe.

I waited, leaning against the opposite side of the stairs as a group of young adults got through, one of them still eighteen, waiting for an approaching birthday, slipped through with what I thought was an obvious fake ID. Then again, perhaps it was just my eye for deception.

"So...Jack.I smiled, and then let it falter on my face. 徹r are you Greg?I let the confusion colour my tone. I could start here. Gainning his name, along with a few other trivial questions before asking about Chime. Humans became more comfortable with sharing information about others if they thought someone liked them. There was comfort in congeniality.

Adam chuckled, and he was shockingly forthcoming. 鄭dam. Tinkerbell in there is just a bit protective. She's had...some run ins with some snitchy little bastards. By not saying your name in public, she doesn't expose your identity. It keeps you grinned, something I suppose that was meant to be intimidating. 的t's _my_ job to kick your ass when you fuck up. In here, at least."

I chuckled, 擢air enough. Does she have a name?I refused to call her _Tinkerbell_. It didn't suit her in the least.

" wasn't looking all the friendly anymore. I realized, as his thoughts turned suspicious, that he had thought I _was_ a friend of Chime's. Now that I was asking questions though, personal ones that had the potential to set her up for trouble, he started to get defensive.

Despite the fact that this made finding anymore about Annabel/Chime troublesome, I appreciated that _someone_ was here who knew enough about her to know she was worth protecting. I just wish I was the one doing it. 典hank you. I meant a real name."

Adam's eyes tightened, and he pulled at the side of his jacket. The butt of a generic black handgun was protruding out of a strap by his hip. 的 like Chime. I'm trained to use this, and I have a nice little plaque on my wall for my marksmanship. Fuck with me. I dare you."

I restrained a smile so I could play the part of the scared teenager, being shown the weapon. The truth was, I was a little impressed by him, though I was rarely fond of humans who found their confidence from weapons. It was strangely comforting to find him on her side. It made a slight difference to me.

I held my hands up, widening my eyes to suggest fear, and started to back away slowly. 展ait, wait! I like her too. I was just curious. She's...a bit of a mystery."

I hesitated as Adam dropped his jacket with a sigh. 添ou can like her all you want. She's not the most open person._I don't even know her name. God, I've known her for years and the most personal thing I know about her is she's a natural Brunette._

Well, I could have told him that.

I slowly lowered my hands. 添ou don't know her, then?I was careful only to use the suggestion of his words, trying to separate that from his thoughts. I could remember a time, long ago, when I would have struggled with that distinction. Thoughts and voices sounded so similar.

Adam was relaxing again. 鉄he's not the most open person,he repeated instead of answering me, he maintained eye contact for a moment, and then looked away. _Don't fucking like this kid, _Adam thought uncomfortably, _there's something off about him...maybe he's carrying something. A knife maybe? _

He gave me a quick once over while I pretended to chew over his statement, looking off into the street. The yellowed street lights made the cracked asphalt look dirtier than it already was. I waited for the feeling of wrongness, because this was not where I belonged, waiting outside of a club for something to happen. I _should_ be home, ignoring Emmett's challenges, or playfully bickering with Alice about throwing all her clothes from the thirties away, already knowing she wouldn't. Nineteen-thirty was the year she finally found Jasper.

I felt around inside myself, looking for a sense of unease, of the frustration the human world imposed with the guise of _normal_. Nothing. Nothing felt out of place other than an impatience to be with _her_. I didn't even know her real name, but I felt a desperate need to be in the bar with her for no other reason than it felt good to be near her. Even the pain of burning seemed a slight price to pay for her company.

Speaking of which, the perfume of her blood was rising above the collective musk of the crowd.

I turned in time to see Chime weaving her way through the crowd towards the door. One blue light flashed on her as she made her way over, struggling to slip past two dancers who were both too drunk to care who they were grinding against. I felt my eyes narrow at this, but the moment that light flashed, I was struck by her, and everything else seemed to fall away.

It glistened glossily down her hair, the hue turning the warm brown into a liquid night, pale skin even fairer. Then she looked up at the door, meeting my eye. The blue of the light should have seemed to give everything a chilled look, cooling where it fell.

Her eyes didn't cool, and I was struck again by her. I could see her eyes perfectly well from this distance, but the spark in them as she caught my eye was enough to make want a closer look. What would it feel like, to hold her face in my hands and properly appreciate the warmth there in her face, I wondered?

And then the blue flickered off again and she broke her eye contact with me. She seemed extra cautious of all the other moving bodies as she came over, and I wondered if she was making a conscious effort to keep her eyes from mine, even as I willed her to look up.

"Adam,she called, struggling to be heard over the thundering bass of the music.

Adam looked at me, 添ou hear something?"

Chime pushed his shoulder, and he spun around instantly, face hostile until he realized who it was. 徹h, hey Tink."

She raised an eyebrow, not looking impressed with the nickname, though something about the weariness of her expression made me think this was an old argument. 笛eff's telling me you were showing濫 She hesitated, looking at me again finally, and I felt myself relax slightly欄Uh, Anthony, your gun."

I narrowed my eyes. 摘dward,I corrected, and she shot me a glare. At least it was my middle name rather than something like Clinton, or Bruce.

Adam shrugged, unperturbed by her fuming stance, arms crossed angrily across her chest

Oh!

I blinked, feeling my mouth slackening, a rush of venom behind my lips. I hadn't noticed before with the bodies of the dancers blocking my view, the light wrong outside, but her shirt was _very_ see through in the light from the club. Hypnotizing in its transparency.

And she looked quite stunning in red. A low growl started in my throat. Neither of them seemed to hear, or, if they did, I was past noticing.

_Touch me,_ I thought suddenly. I'd do anything in this moment if she would just reach out and pull us somewhere more private. You want my right arm? Take it. This extra leg I have kicking around? Sure, have them both, just _touch me_.

I shivered, realizing that there was something familiar stirring. That feeling like I was about to burst, to completely lose control, yet rather than fear, I thrilled with excitement. I just wanted to touch her, to feel how soft her hair would be in my hand, how warm her skin was against mine, to have my face close enough to hers that I would be able to see all the way down through her jewel-like irises. They were so bright and dark and deep all at once.

I felt my phone begin to vibrate in my pocket, but I didn't think I could concentrate enough to reach for it. I didn't want to, either.

"Hey, Romeo?her voice was flat, undecipherable without her expression as a guide.

I lifted my chin a little, wanting to meet her eyes, but my eyes were still caught by the red shape behind the gauzy white of her shirt. Her skin was almost too light for the creamy rise of her breasts to be seen.

Someone cleared their throat, and something clicked in my mind that allowed me to realize that I was staring at Chime in a completely inappropriate way.

I quickly turned away, looking at the grey concrete we stood on, ashamed.

"Please excuse me,I managed, embarrassed by my lewdness, 鍍hat was...absolutely unacceptable of me.

To my absolute shock, they started laughing. I looked up to find Adam was laughing almost as freely as Emmett, but with a little more care for who was in ear shot. Chime though, was covering her mouth, her face turned away from me, hiding in her hair as her shoulders shook with laughter. This was different from her light laughter. It was freer somehow, even as she struggled to contain it. It was as though if she wasn't in control of her reactions, of her expression, it wasn't safe to show. She reacted the same with her anger, covering it with a hard smile, or a distraction.

The image of her gathering all her silken tresses up into her hair band, then letting them fall down her back, gathering them again...

"Anthony,though Chime wasn't laughing now, she was smiling, 鍍hat _is_ kind of what the shirt is for."

I felt my face contort with disgust at this, and looked away to smooth it. The idea of Chime willingly displaying herself溶o, not that exactly. It was the sordid idea of all those men seeing what I had, of _liking_ it, as they would. It was clear to anyone who paused to look that she was gorgeous; I didn't think it was possible for me to deny that any longer.

I wanted to deny _them_ that, though. I wanted to wrap my coat around her, shield her body from their hungry eyes. Maybe I would steal her away for myself.

Perhaps I wouldn't give her back.

I realized I had turned to stare at her again, though this time I held her eyes with mine. And Chime seemed just as caught by my gaze, as I was by hers.

The smile slowly faded from her lips. 的 think you should go now,she murmured lowly, not breaking eye contact.

Despite the fact that I had obviously made a fool of myself, and that I was most unwelcome here in her world, I didn't want to leave yet. Perhaps she saw this in my face, because she moved a step forward.

"Edward,she whispered quietly, and it was a miracle that she imagined I would hear her over the thundering beat of the music, though of course I could.

I felt myself respond to her proximity, moving a little closer to her myself, dragged into the dark depths of her eyes. There was so much feeling there, as there had been in her voice. I could just as well hear her fear for me, her quiet anger, her concern for the oblivious stranger that擁n her eyes at least謡as going out of his way to get himself into trouble, just as well as I could see it.

I pulled in a breath unthinkingly. With her so close to me, even in the open air, her scent scorched down my throat. Beside the pain though, there was a great breath of lightness in my chest. It was as if the air was expanding, the fiery heat forcing it against the inside of my ribs until I was sure I they would crack with the force. A deep warmth gathered solidly at the base of my throat, and I knew there was no way I would be able to speak. I wasn't even sure I could let this mighty breath out that was still expanding in my chest.

I tore my eyes from hers, watching the ground instead. I couldn't bare the sensation, like I might explode with the feeling if I kept her eyes any longer. Despite this, the feeling wasn't particularly uncomfortable. A strange piece of me hungered for it, actually. It was the newness though羊ight on the edge of pain, but more of an unfamiliar pleasure than not葉hat scared me.

I didn't understand this. I didn't know how to react.

Chime imagined shame as I stared at my feet, struggling with my expression again. 敵o home."

I believe I managed a nod. I could just as well not have in the state I was in.

I turned, escaping from her. From the foreignness of these strange emotions she enticed. First the drowning from the first night, now this strange feeling of being pulled apart at the seams.

My hands were shaking so badly as I got into my car that I didn't dare try to start it, least I actually puncture my starter with my key rather than slide it into the slot. Finally though, I managed to calm, and then I felt the purr of the engine, and then finally, the relief to find that my suddenly unreliable body was able to perform the abruptly difficult task of starting the car.

I finally drove away, glancing back once to see Chime standing guard at the entrance to the club. I felt a brief shiver of something I couldn't describe. Pleasure or uneasiness? I wasn't sure, but I knew its cause.

It was the knowledge that someone stood there, and the appreciation that she was there for me.


End file.
